Land Unit Converter — Bigha, Katha, Acre

Ask how big a bigha is and the honest answer is “where?”. In Bangladesh and West Bengal a bigha is 14,400 square feet. In Uttar Pradesh it is 27,000, and in Himachal Pradesh it is under 9,000. Land in South Asia changes hands in bigha, katha, decimal (shotok), marla and kanal, while surveys and banks use acres, hectares and square metres. This converter takes an area in any of those units and restates it in all the others at once.

Pick the region and the bigha and katha follow it. A second table shows the same piece of land counted in each region’s bigha, which settles most “how many bigha is that?” arguments before they start.

Worked Example: One Bangladeshi Bigha

The converter opens with 1 bigha, region Bangladesh. It reports:

• 14,400 square feet, which is 1,337.804 m² or 1,600 square yards
• 33.05785 decimal and 0.3305785 acres, so the common shorthand “33 shotok to a bigha” is slightly low
• 20 katha of 720 sq ft each
• The same land is only 0.5333 of a bigha in Uttar Pradesh but 1.588 bigha in Punjab and Haryana

Load Sample moves on to a 5-katha plot (3,600 sq ft), 2.5 acres (250 decimal), a bigha in Uttar Pradesh and a 10-marla house plot.

Format Notes: Which Units Are Fixed and Which Vary

The international units are exact. A foot is 0.3048 m, so an acre is 43,560 sq ft or 4,046.8564224 m², and a decimal (also called shotok or cent) is one hundredth of an acre, 435.6 sq ft. The guntha (1/40 acre), the marla (272.25 sq ft, with 20 to a kanal) and the Tamil Nadu ground (2,400 sq ft) follow their usual standard sizes. Only the bigha and the katha depend on the region, and a katha is always one twentieth of that region’s bigha. Commas in the number are fine, and a blank or zero area is refused with “Area must be greater than 0.”

When Not to Use a Converter: Deeds and Local Measures

Local custom can differ even inside one region. Some districts use a “kachha” or “pucca” bigha, and the marla in parts of Lahore is 225 sq ft rather than 272.25. For a sale or a legal dispute, the area written on the deed or the official survey record is the one that counts. Use this tool to understand a figure, not to replace a surveyor’s measurement.