Ankanam to Square Feet
One ankanam is 72 ft², 8 gaj and 6.689 m² by the Nellore convention, 6.05 to the cent, 605 to the acre. No document fixes it; Tirupati's 36 is refused.
Ankanam to Square Feet — 72 by convention, and the districts that disagree
One ankanam is 72 ft² in the Nellore convention: an 8 by 9 ft bay, 8 square yards, 6.689 m², 6.05 to the cent and 605 to the acre. No government document fixing that figure was found, Tirupati is said to use 36, and this page converts only the figure it can name.
Plots in Nellore, Tirupati and Chittoor, and across the Andhra coast, are quoted in ankanam, and the conversion everyone uses is 1 ankanam = 72 ft², so 100 ankanam is 7,200 ft² and 200 ankanam is 14,400. Seventy-two is 8 × 9, which is why the unit is also written as 8 square yards, and it divides the cent 6.05 times and the acre 605 times.
The difficulty is that 72 is a convention and not a definition. The Government of India glossary of revenue terms does not contain the word, the Andhra Pradesh registration portal refused a connection while this page was written, and the sources that do print a figure disagree: 72 for Nellore and the coast, 36 for Tirupati, and a 54 that turns up on converter sites with no district attached. So this page converts at 72, says so on every line, and lists the other figures as refusals rather than as options, because a factor nobody can source is not a conversion.
| Ankanam · convention | — |
|---|---|
| Square feet | — |
| Square metres | — |
| Square yards (gaj) | — |
| Cent · exact | — |
| Guntha · nominal | — |
| Acre · hectare | — |
| As a square plot | — |
| If Tirupati's 36 ft² were meant | — |
72 is an 8 by 9 ft bay, and every ratio under it is arithmetic on that one figure. The Nellore convention makes the ankanam 72 ft², which is 8 square yards exactly and 6.68901888 m² on the international foot. That makes the ankanam sit neatly under the units the record actually uses: 6.05 ankanam to the cent, 605 to the acre, 15.125 to the guntha. Those three ratios are arithmetic on 72 and on the acre, not separate facts, and if a district uses a different bay every one of them moves.
No government document fixing the ankanam was found, and this page says so instead of pretending. The Government of India Glossary of Revenue Terms, which this site has read for cent and guntha, does not contain the word in any chapter, including Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The Andhra Pradesh Registration and Stamps portal, which publishes market values per unit and would settle which unit the sub-registrar prices a Nellore plot in, refused the connection from outside India while this page was researched. What could be read is a Wikipedia entry with no citation for its figures, a property forum and several converter sites, and they agree on 72 for Nellore while attributing 36 to Tirupati. Agreement among sites that copy each other is not a source. The 72 is graded a convention on this page, and the constant behind the widget is recorded that way.
Tirupati's 36 ft² is half of 72, and this page refuses to convert it rather than print a guess. Every mention of 36 that could be read says “in some places such as Tirupati” and stops; none names a survey, a municipal rule or a registration circular. It is plausible: a 6 by 6 ft bay is a real bay, and half a Nellore ankanam is a suspiciously tidy relation for two independent local units to have, which is the kind of thing that happens when a figure is back-calculated from another one. The table prints what your amount would be if 36 were meant, so the gap is visible as a number, but the unit list offers Tirupati only as a refusal. The same goes for the 54 ft² that appears on converter sites with no district attached. A number for which nobody can say where it applies is not a unit.
The mistakes are in the yard, not in the multiplication. Seventy-two square feet is 8 square yards, and 8 is the number people carry in their heads, so an ankanam quoted as “8” gets read as 8 m² on a metric drawing. It is not: 8 m² is 86.1 ft², a fifth too large. The other direction, 6.689 m² rounded to 6.7 and then remembered as 7, puts a 100 ankanam plot at 700 m² instead of 668.9. And the cent relation is 6.05, not 6: a buyer who takes 600 ankanam to the acre is short 360 ft², five bays, on every acre. The widget carries the full 6.68901888 and 6.05 and rounds only at the display.
The record is in cents and the listing is in ankanam, and only one of those is a definition. Andhra Pradesh land records and registration documents carry extent in acres and cents, or in square yards for house sites, and a cent is exactly one hundredth of an acre by the government glossary's own words. So a “100 ankanam” listing is a 16.53 cent or 800 square yard plot on the document, and that is the figure the stamp duty is worked from. When the deed and the listing disagree, the deed wins, and if the two do not reconcile at 72 the honest reading is that the seller's ankanam is not this page's. Cent, guntha and gaj each have their own page on this site, and the exact ones are exact there for the same reasons they are here.
Ankanam, 72 ft² is a convention. It was read from the English Wikipedia
entry “Ankanam” (72 sq ft, mostly in the Nellore District; 36 sq ft in some places such as
Tirupati; 605 ankanam to the acre and 6.05 to the cent in Nellore), which cites no source for any of
those figures, and from a NoBroker forum thread and the area-converter.com converter page, which print the same
two numbers. No Andhra Pradesh government order, registration circular, survey
manual or gazette fixing the unit was found. The Government of India Glossary of Revenue Terms
(Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development) does not contain the word. The Andhra
Pradesh Registration and Stamps Department market-value portal (registration.ap.gov.in) refused the
connection from outside India on 9 September 2026; that is recorded here rather than papered over.
The 36 and 54 ft² figures are named as circulating claims and not offered as factors.
Exact by definition: 1 acre = 43,560 ft² and 1 ft = 0.3048 m, NIST Handbook 44 (2023),
Appendix C, on the international foot in force since 1 January 2023; 1 yd = 3 ft, so 72 ft² = 8
yd² and 6.68901888 m² follow with no rounding. Cent is 1/100 acre from the Government
of India glossary's Kerala chapter, corroborated by Andhra Pradesh G.O.Ms.No.371 Rev (Asn-I)
3.5.1999 as quoted in the CAG Andhra Pradesh Land Revenue Audit Manual (“upto 25 cents or 10
guntas”); both were read for this site's cent page. Guntha is 1/40 acre from the same
glossary's Gujarat chapter, which adds “but local definition may vary”, and is graded a
published ratio and not a definition, as on the guntha page. The identity gaj = square yard is a market
convention graded on the gaj page.
Worked example
A Nellore listing says 100 ankanam. How many square feet, and what will the deed carry?
- By the Nellore convention an ankanam is an 8 × 9 ft bay: 72 ft², which is 8 square yards.
- 100 × 72 = 7,200 ft²; in gaj 7,200 ÷ 9 = 800.
- In metres: 7,200 × 0.09290304 = 668.90 m².
- The deed carries cents: 7,200 ÷ 435.6 = 16.5289 cent, or 0.16529 acre. In guntha, 7,200 ÷ 1,089 = 6.6116.
- If the seller's ankanam were Tirupati's 36 ft², the same count would be 3,600 ft²; the page shows that figure but will not convert at it.
7,200 ft² (668.90 m², 800 gaj, 16.53 cent, 6.61 guntha) at the 72 ft² convention. On the document that is about 16.53 cents or 800 square yards; if it reads 8.26 cents, the ankanam meant was 36, not 72.
9 values on this page were driven in a browser and compared with independently derived figures on 2026-09-09 (2414 values across 203 calculators site-wide).
Questions
How many square feet is one ankanam?
72 ft² by the convention used in Nellore and along the Andhra coast: an 8 × 9 ft bay, 8 square yards, 6.689 m². That gives 6.05 ankanam to the cent and 605 to the acre. No government document fixing the figure was found, so it is a convention, not a definition.
Is an ankanam 36 square feet in Tirupati?
Every source this site could read says so, and none of them names a survey, rule or circular behind it. Half of 72 is a suspiciously tidy figure for an independent unit. This page shows what 36 would make of your amount but refuses to convert at it; the deed, in cents or square yards, is the figure that counts.
How many ankanam in a cent, and in an acre?
At 72 ft², 6.05 ankanam to the cent and 605 to the acre, because a cent is exactly 435.6 ft² and an acre 43,560. Taking 600 to the acre is short by 360 ft², five bays, per acre. A guntha of 1,089 ft² is 15.125 ankanam.