Nali to square feet: land units in Nainital and Kumaon, with a conversion table

In the hills around Nainital, Bhimtal, Bhowali and Ramgarh, land is still bought and sold in nali. The registry and the building map will be in square metres, the builder talks in square feet and the seller in gaj. Here is how they all connect, and the one mistake that makes hill plots look bigger than they are.

The quick answer

• 1 nali = 2,160 sq ft
• 1 nali = 240 sq yd (gaj)
• 1 nali ≈ 200.7 sq m
• 1 nali = 16 mutthi, and 1 mutthi = 135 sq ft (15 gaj, about 12.5 sq m)
• About 20 nali make an acre, and about 50 nali make a hectare

Conversion table

To convert any figure: square feet = nali × 2,160; square metres = nali × 200.67; and nali = square metres ÷ 200.67. Values in square metres are rounded to one decimal place.

Two numbers worth remembering

250 sq m, the limit for a residential purchase by someone from outside Uttarakhand under the 2025 land law, is about 1.25 nali, or roughly 2,690 sq ft (see what the 2025 rules allow). The cottage plots we laid out for the township at Jamrani, Ramgarh are of about the same size.

What about bigha?

Bigha and biswa are used mostly in the plains, around Haldwani, Ramnagar and Udham Singh Nagar, and the size of a bigha differs from place to place. Never assume a conversion. Ask for the area in square metres as written in the registry and the khatauni. Here is how to read khasra and khatauni.

Why hill plots measure bigger than they are

Land area in the records and on a building map is the plan (horizontal) area: the area you would see from directly above. On a slope, a tape stretched along the ground measures the sloping length, which is always longer than the horizontal one. On a steep plot the difference is large enough to change the price by lakhs and to break a building design that assumed the bigger number.

• Terraces make it worse: each riser wall eats into the flat area you can actually use.
• Boundaries along old field walls and paths are rarely straight, so ‘length × width’ is only a rough guess.
• A survey with a total station records horizontal distances and levels together, which gives the true area.

That is why we measure every plot before a price is fixed or a drawing is started. See how plot demarcation works and why a level survey comes first on a slope.

Area also decides what you can build

The rules on floor area, ground coverage and setbacks are all worked out from the plot area, so an area that is wrong by 10 percent means a house that is wrong by 10 percent too. Here is how setbacks, height and floor area work. And when you are comparing prices per nali, remember the circle rate is set per square metre; see circle rate and market value in Nainital.

Buying or dividing land? Our land surveyor service measures the true plan area with instruments and gives you a site plan in square metres, square feet and nali.

[S-04] Related serviceLand SurveyorAccurate plot measurement, levels and demarcation on hill terrain.