Andhra Pradesh Encumbrance Certificate Online: 2026 Guide

The Short Version (2026)

The Encumbrance Certificate (EC) you get from the IGRS AP portal (registration.ap.gov.in) shows only what was registered against the property in the years you pick, such as sales, mortgages, gifts and court attachments. It is no title certificate. A Nil result leaves four questions open. Is the survey number on the 22A prohibited list? Is the land government-assigned land? Is a court case pending? Has the owner created an equitable mortgage by leaving title deeds with a bank? Download the EC first and then check each of these four on its own. The unsigned "EC for Information Only" costs nothing and appears immediately. To get a digitally signed EC you log in and pay a small fee: ₹200 for up to 30 years, ₹500 beyond that (check the portal).

Meaning of an Encumbrance Certificate

An EC is a certified extract from the register that the Sub-Registrar keeps under the Registration Act 1908. It lists each registered transaction on a property for a period of your choice. In Andhra Pradesh you obtain it through the portal of the Inspector General of Registration and Stamps (IGRS AP), which is built on the state's CARD system (Computer-Aided Administration of Registration Department).

A frequent and costly error is to take the EC as evidence that nothing at all burdens the property. What the EC proves is limited to the register's contents: documents that someone presented for registration: sale, mortgage, gift and release deeds, along with court attachments. Whatever was never registered will not show, and the law does not require some things to be registered at all. Use the EC to begin a title search. It is not a clearance.

Does a Nil EC in Andhra Pradesh Prove Safe Title?

It does not. Understand this before you hand over any token money in Andhra Pradesh. On more than one occasion the Supreme Court has held that an entry in the register is not proof of ownership. The Sub-Registrar performs a ministerial function and has no power to decide title (K. Gopi v. The Sub-Registrar, 2025 INSC 462). Also, registering a document "does not create any title" (Suraj Lamp & Industries v. State of Haryana, (2012) 1 SCC 656). An EC is only a search of that register, so the same limits apply to it.

A clean AP EC fails to reveal four matters, any one of which can defeat your purchase.

1. The 22A prohibited-list flag. Section 22-A of the Registration Act allows the government to stop registration of some land categories, namely government land, assigned land, endowment and Waqf land, and land specially notified. A flag belongs to the survey number and not to any deed, and IGRS maintains it in its own central database. So a property can come with a spotless EC covering 30 years and still not be registerable. Look at that list on registration.ap.gov.in separately from the EC.

2. Assigned land. The AP Assigned Lands (Prohibition of Transfers) Act 1977 forbids the sale of land that was assigned to the landless, and any sale in breach is void. But assignment is a land-type status found in the Adangal, 1-B or ROR revenue records, and never an EC entry. Confirm the classification of the land separately before you trust a clean EC.

3. A pending court case (lis pendens). A plaint is not something that gets registered, so by design an EC cannot show a pending suit. Under Section 52 of the Transfer of Property Act, whoever buys during a pending suit is bound by the final decree. That holds even without a stay order and even when the EC was spotless. Litigation has to be searched by party name on eCourts and in the AP High Court, using the seller and every earlier owner in the chain. A search by survey number will not do.

4. An equitable mortgage. Handing the original title deeds to a bank is enough to create a valid mortgage (under Section 58(f) of the Transfer of Property Act). No registration is needed, so the EC never shows it, which makes it the most common hidden charge. A CERSAI search, which costs a few rupees, together with a physical look at the original documents, is the way to find it.

That is the difference between a proper title search and an EC download. The EC tells you what the register contains. Title due diligence tells you who owns the property and whether any claim burdens it.

Form 15 and Form 16: Which Certificate You Will Get

You receive Form 15 if registered encumbrances exist for the property in the period you asked for. For every transaction it states the document number, the date, the parties and the type: sale, mortgage, gift, release or attachment. This is the usual result.

Form 16 is the Nil Encumbrance Certificate, issued when the search finds no registered transaction in that period. Do not assume it is good news. The property may truly have no registered dealings, or you may have entered the wrong survey number, SRO or period, so that real entries were missed. When a Nil result surprises you, check your inputs again before treating it as clearance.

Applying for an AP EC on the IGRS AP Portal

• Visit the official IGRS AP portal, registration.ap.gov.in.
• Find the EC / CC / MV services under the citizen services section of the homepage.
• Decide which output you need. EC for Information Only is an unsigned copy, normally produced at once and free. It suits a first look, but banks and courts do not accept it as a formal document. A Signed EC is digitally signed, needs a login and carries a fee. This is the one banks and Sub-Registrars accept.
• Fill in the district, the Sub-Registrar office, and either the document number or the survey number.
• Choose the years to be searched. Banks usually ask for 13 years, while a full search covers 30.
• Pay online by net banking, card or UPI, then download the certificate or save the application number to track it.

If you want help in person, Meeseva centres also take EC applications offline.

What an AP EC Costs in 2026

Reported charges on the portal are ₹200 where the period is up to 30 years and ₹500 where it is longer. The unsigned information copy is normally free. Some sources show tiers that step up every five years from about ₹200 to ₹500. Take the amount that the portal's Duty Fee Calculator shows on the day of your application as the right one, and verify it before paying instead of trusting any blog table, this one included. Do not confuse the ₹500 with an urgent or tatkal charge: it is the cost of the longer period, not a payment for speed.

Reading the Entries in Your EC

Entries carry the document number, registration date, document type, the executing and claimant parties, and a brief property description. Go through them in date order to follow how ownership passed.

Look closely at the mortgage entries. A registered mortgage with no later release or reconveyance deed may still be live. The register records instruments and not repayments, so a loan described to you as "closed" may remain visible on the EC until its release deed is registered. Note too any court attachment, partition deed or gift deed, since each can alter who is entitled to sign the sale.

Typical Problems and Their Fixes

Wrong property particulars. A survey number or SRO jurisdiction that is off can give you a misleading Nil certificate (Form 16). Compare the survey number with the latest Adangal or 1-B before trusting a Nil result, and try every variant of a sub-divided survey number.

Transactions the EC omits. Unregistered agreements, oral partitions and "sales" made through a General Power of Attorney are absent. So are 22A flags, assigned land, litigation and equitable mortgages. Support the EC with revenue records, a CERSAI search and a litigation search by party name.

Gaps before digitisation. The online EC reaches only as far back as the SRO has computerised its records. For earlier links in the chain, ask the Sub-Registrar office for a certified search or certified copies, so that the chain does not appear to start at the point where digitisation began.

Signed EC taking time. Expect a delay of a few working days. If the application remains stuck after that, take the application number to the SRO.

Changes in 2026 That Affect AP Buyers

The Andhra Pradesh government has been trimming the 22A prohibited list. On 1 January 2026 it dropped five categories of land. They are land allotted to ex-servicemen and serving defence personnel, freedom fighters and political sufferers, assigned land dating from before 18 June 1954, and certain private patta lands. Officials were also told to correct an old anomaly in which a whole survey number was flagged because of a dispute over a small portion. The survey number is to be sub-divided and only the disputed part flagged. Later in 2026 more categories were reported as due for removal, namely inam lands, conditional patta, old unapproved layouts, and temple, Waqf or APSFC land that had been auctioned. IGRS is to hold the one central database of prohibited property, and a new inclusion needs prior notice, then 30 days to object and 14 days for legal submissions, and finally a reasoned order.

For a buyer, the point is that the 22A list changes month by month and is kept apart from the EC. The IGRS list, and not the EC, decides if your sale deed gets registered. Before committing, see the current 22A position of your exact survey number on registration.ap.gov.in.

How LegiScore Handles EC Verification

LegiScore retrieves the EC and compares it with what the EC cannot see: the 22A list, the revenue and assigned-land classification, CERSAI charges, and litigation involving every name in the chain. Results are rolled into one LegiScore Property Score (LPS). A lawyer, lender or buyer gets the risk picture within minutes. Hidden but serious items are marked and not just absent, so nobody has to download an EC and hope.