Guntha to Square Feet

A guntha is a 33 ft square, and that is why 1,089 is exact rather than rounded. The revenue surveys of the Bombay Deccan measured with a chain of 11 yards, 33 feet, and a guntha is the square on that chain: 33 × 33 = 1,089 ft², which is 121 square yards because 11 × 11 = 121. The Maharashtra State Gazetteer says exactly this, “the guntha (121 square yards, i.e., the square formed on one chain or 11 yards), 40 gunthas making one acre”. Forty of them make 43,560 ft², which is the acre by definition, so the two descriptions (a 33 ft square, one fortieth of an acre) are the same number reached from either end. Note the relation to the surveyor's chain of 66 ft: a square Gunter's chain is 4,356 ft², one tenth of an acre and exactly four guntha. In metres the guntha is 1,089 × 0.09290304 = 101.17141056 m², exact on the international foot, and 121 × 0.83612736 gives the same figure from the yard.

“1 guntha = 1,000 ft²” loses a twelfth of the plot, and “100 m²” loses more than an are looks like it should. A thousand is 89 ft² short per guntha, 8.17%; on a 10 guntha plot that is 890 ft², roughly one whole guntha given away in the rounding. A hundred square metres is 1.17 m² short per guntha, 1.16%; on 10 guntha that is 11.7 m², about the floor of a small bedroom. Both figures are printed on converter sites as if they were the unit, and both are wrong in the same direction, so a buyer who prices land off either is paying for area the seller is not conveying, or the reverse. The widget prints what each substitute would say for the amount you entered so the gap is a number and not a percentage.

The R column of a 7/12 is ares, and an are is not a guntha. In Maharashtra the 7/12 extract (satbara utara) carries area as hectare, are and square metre, written H‑R‑sqm; Gujarat's village form 7 does the same. An are is 100 m² by definition; a guntha is 101.17. They are within 1.17% of each other, which is close enough that people read the R column as gunthas and far enough that a 20 guntha plot reads on the extract as 20 R 23 sqm, and the 23 m² go missing. The table above writes your area the way the extract would, so you can compare it against the document rather than against a memory of it. That the extract is kept in hectare and are is described here as the record's convention; no rule fixing that format is cited on this page because none was read for it.

The sizes people say, and the one number a market has in common with a record. One guntha is 1,089 ft² and 101.17 m²; two is 2,178 and 202.34; five is 5,445 and 505.86; ten is 10,890 and 1,011.71, a quarter acre; twenty is 21,780 and 2,023.43, a half. The round number lives in guntha, the record carries a metric figure with a tail, and the deed usually carries both, so an extract for “5 guntha” will read 0‑05‑05.86 or thereabouts and the tail is not an error. Karnataka listings and extracts commonly quote acre and guntha together, so 1 acre 20 guntha is one and a half acres, not 120 of anything; in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana the same unit is written gunta, and an Andhra government order the site has read equates 25 cents with 10 guntas, which is the 40‑to‑the‑acre guntha and no other.

Where this page stops. The Government of India glossary that defines the guntha as 1/40 acre adds “but local definition may vary”, and publishes no rival figure for any state; none is invented here. Odisha is the one place a rival figure was found in print: the pre‑British ladder in the state's own journals gives a guntha of one twenty‑fifth of a mana, about 1,742.4 ft², while every Bhubaneswar price page prints 1,089. No current Odisha instrument fixing either was read, and Bhulekh Odisha records land in acre and decimal, so the Odisha option above returns that fact instead of a conversion. Bigha is kept off this page altogether; it has its own page with its own refusals and nothing here should duplicate them. For cent, ground and the units this site declines to guess at, the cent page carries the reasoning.