Land UnitsIn the hill districts of Uttarakhand, land is measured in nali and mutthi, not in bigha. Terraced fields are small, and the nali is sized for them.
The size
Training material of the Uttarakhand Academy of Administration gives 1 nali = 16 mutthi = 240 square yards = 0.02 hectare. In square feet that is 2,160, and one mutthi is 135 square feet. Fifty nali make about one hectare, and about 20 nali make an acre (20.17 to be exact).
Nali and the plains bigha
The same document gives the Uttarakhand bigha as a square of 82.5 feet, 6,806.25 square feet, with 20 biswa to the bigha and 6.4 bigha (6 bigha 8 biswa) to the acre. So one bigha is 3.15 nali.
Worked example
A field is recorded as 7 nali 4 mutthi. In mutthi that is 7 × 16 + 4 = 116 mutthi. In square feet it is 116 × 135 = 15,660, which is 0.3595 acre or about 0.1455 hectare.
A note on old records
Like most traditional units, the nali was not the same from valley to valley until it was fixed in the records. For old papers, go by the figure your own revenue office uses.
Nali: ready table
| Nali | Square feet | Square yards | Acres |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2,160 | 240 | 0.0496 |
| 2 | 4,320 | 480 | 0.0992 |
| 3 | 6,480 | 720 | 0.1488 |
| 4 | 8,640 | 960 | 0.1983 |
| 5 | 10,800 | 1,200 | 0.2479 |
| 6 | 12,960 | 1,440 | 0.2975 |
| 7 | 15,120 | 1,680 | 0.3471 |
| 8 | 17,280 | 1,920 | 0.3967 |
| 9 | 19,440 | 2,160 | 0.4463 |
| 10 | 21,600 | 2,400 | 0.4959 |
| 15 | 32,400 | 3,600 | 0.7438 |
| 20 | 43,200 | 4,800 | 0.9917 |
| 25 | 54,000 | 6,000 | 1.2397 |
| 30 | 64,800 | 7,200 | 1.4876 |
| 40 | 86,400 | 9,600 | 1.9835 |
| 50 | 1,08,000 | 12,000 | 2.4793 |
| 75 | 1,62,000 | 18,000 | 3.719 |
| 100 | 2,16,000 | 24,000 | 4.9587 |
For a sale, a loan or a court paper, go by your own revenue record. Local units can differ between districts and between old and new records. The sizes here were read in the official documents named under Sources on 11 November 2026. This site is not a government site and gives no legal advice.
Questions people ask
How many square feet is 1 nali?
1 nali is 2,160 square feet, which is 240 square yards or 200.67 square metres. Source: the Uttarakhand Academy of Administration.
How many square feet is 1 mutthi?
1 mutthi is 135 square feet, which is 15 square yards or 12.54 square metres. Source: the Uttarakhand Academy of Administration.
Sources
- Revenue Records and Arrangement of Holdings (training material), Uttarakhand Academy of Administration, Nainital, conversion page. Open the document