An NA order (अकृषिक परवानगी — akrushik parvangi, non-agricultural permission) is the Collector’s written sanction converting farm land to residential, commercial or industrial use under the Maharashtra Land Revenue Code, 1966. To get a copy of an existing order, quote the order number from the remarks column of the 7/12 and apply at the issuing Collectorate’s record room, file an RTI (₹10 fee, ₹2 per page), or use a Setu / Maha e-Seva Kendra — routes this guide walks through, because no portal lets you simply download someone’s NA order. And since 31 December 2025, the MLRC (Second Amendment) Act, 2025 has scrapped the separate NA-permission step wherever the use is already permissible under the Development or Regional Plan: development permission now acts as deemed NA, against a one-time premium.
What an NA order is — and what a real one looks like
Agricultural land in Maharashtra cannot lawfully carry a bungalow, shop or factory until its use is converted. The instrument that historically did this was the NA order — also called NA permission, and (before the 2025 amendment) a Section 44 order, after the MLRC provision it was issued under. Once granted, the land’s classification on the 7/12 utara changes from शेती (agricultural) to बिनशेती (binsheti) / अकृषिक for the converted area, and the plot starts paying non-agricultural assessment instead of land revenue on agricultural rates.
People searching for an NA order sample PDF usually want to know what a genuine order contains before trusting the one a seller waves at them. The samples circulating online — and the orders district collectorates themselves publish (Dhule uploads its NA land sale permission orders as PDFs) — share one anatomy. A real order, often several pages long, carries:
- Letterhead and file number of the issuing office — Collector, Additional Collector or Sub-Divisional Officer — with the order number and date
- The grantee’s name and the land’s village, taluka, district and survey/gat number
- The exact area permitted, in square metres — an order for 1,900-odd sq m out of a larger gat converts only that portion, not the whole number
- The sanctioned purpose — residential, commercial, industrial or mixed — which binds the land; building a shop on a residential-purpose order is unauthorised use
- Recitals: a numbered run of findings (a real Latur-district order runs to seventeen) recording that ownership was verified, objections were sought from the planning authority and line departments, and none blocked the grant
- Conditions: commence the use within the stated period (typically one year), observe setbacks and planning rules, pay the premium — with reversion to agricultural status for breach
- The premium/conversion charge demanded or acknowledged, and the Sanad number and date where one was issued
- Signature and seal of the issuing officer
Match every one of these against the 7/12 and the sale deed before money moves. An order whose survey number, area or grantee doesn’t line up with the record is a problem, not a technicality.
NA order vs Sanad vs deemed NA — the 2025 amendment
Three terms get used interchangeably and shouldn’t be. The NA order is the permission; the Sanad is the certificate issued after conditions are met and the premium paid, recording the terms on which the converted land is held — treated in law as prima facie, not conclusive, evidence of title. Deemed NA is the family of situations where no separate permission is needed at all.
That third category swallowed the other two at the end of 2025. The Maharashtra Land Revenue Code (Second Amendment) Act, 2025 — introduced in the Assembly on 8 December 2025 and given assent on 31 December 2025 — substituted Section 42 and deleted the old conversion machinery wholesale: Sections 42A–42D (the earlier, patchwork deemed-NA provisions), 44, 44A, 45, 46 and 47A all go. A Government Resolution of 10 February 2026 operationalised the change. The working rules now:
- Where the proposed use is permissible under the sanctioned Development Plan or Regional Plan (under the MRTP Act, 1966), the Planning Authority’s development permission itself effects the conversion — no separate Collector permission, no separate sanad
- The one-time premium (next section) is paid at the development-permission stage, and the revenue record is to be updated on grant and payment
- Banks have been directed not to insist on a sanad where valid development permission exists and the premium is paid
- Occupancy class is untouched: Class II / new-tenure land keeps its transfer restrictions, and those permissions remain a separate question from use conversion
Existing NA orders and sanads issued under the old sections remain what they always were — proof of a conversion already made — which is exactly why getting a copy of one still matters.
How to get a copy of an existing NA order
This is the question none of the guides answer, so here is the whole toolkit. Start at the 7/12: the remarks entry gives you the order number, date and issuing office — the three identifiers every copy application asks for. Then pick a route:
- Collectorate / SDO record room (अभिलेख कक्ष) — certified copy. NA files live with the office that issued the order: the Collectorate’s revenue branch, or the Sub-Divisional Officer / Tahsil office for orders issued at that level. Apply for a certified copy (nakkal) with a court-fee stamp, quoting the order number and year, village, taluka and survey/gat number. A certified copy carries the office’s seal and is what a bank or court will actually accept. Copying fees are small but vary by office — we found no consolidated, dated fee notification for record-room copies, so ask the counter.
- RTI application. Where you don’t know the order number, or the record room stonewalls, the Right to Information Act does the job: apply to the Public Information Officer of the issuing Collectorate with a ₹10 application fee, describing the land and the approximate year; copies cost ₹2 per page and the reply is due within 30 days. Maharashtra accepts online RTI applications at rtionline.maharashtra.gov.in. RTI is also the clean way to verify a suspicious order — ask the office to confirm from its record that order number X of year Y exists and covers survey number Z.
- Setu / Maha e-Seva Kendra. The service kendras attached to Collectorates and tahsils file copy applications on your behalf for a service charge — useful when you can’t visit the record room in person. The Aaple Sarkar e-services platform (aaplesarkar.mahaonline.gov.in) has hosted revenue-department copy services, but the portal was unreachable when we checked, so treat the kendra counter as the reliable version of the same channel.
- District website. Some collectorates publish NA permission orders directly — Dhule’s document section is the standing example. Worth a search before you pay anyone.
- Your own paper trail. Orders granted through the online route were delivered as digitally signed PDFs to the applicant’s login; layout developers and housing societies hold the order and sanad for the parent plot, and a seller’s title file should include them. For a flat or plot in a layout, the parent order is the one that matters.
Check NA status on the 7/12 — before and after
Whatever the paper says, the record decides. The Talathi enters the NA order number, date and Sanad reference into the other-rights/remarks section of the 7/12 through a ferfar (mutation) entry, and the land-use classification flips to बिनशेती for the converted area. So the fastest legitimate check on any “NA plot” costs nothing: pull the current 7/12 utara on bhulekh.mahabhumi.gov.in and read the remarks column. The same other-rights column also flags tenure restrictions — a “देवस्थान इनाम वर्ग 3” entry, for instance, marks devasthan inam land that cannot be converted or sold at all. For anything you’ll show a bank, download the digitally signed 7/12 from digitalsatbara.mahabhumi.gov.in (₹15 per signed document) — loan underwriters check the mutation entry, not the photocopied order.
If a genuine order exists but the 7/12 shows nothing, the conversion never reached the record: file the mutation with the Talathi using the order and sanad, then confirm the new ferfar number appears. And under the post-amendment regime, a plot converted via development permission shows the corresponding entry the same way — no entry, no conversion, whichever route was taken.
Applying fresh: who still needs permission, and how
Post-amendment, most conversions inside planning-authority areas ride on the building/ development permission application (through the local body’s online building-permission system) — the premium is collected there and no separate NA file opens. A fresh conversion application to the revenue machinery still arises where the plan doesn’t cover the use or the land sits outside that framework. The documentation, built up from the Conversion-of-Use Rules, 1969 era, is worth knowing because record-room copy requests mirror it:
- Prescribed application form in duplicate with a ₹5 court-fee stamp
- Current 7/12 (with photocopies — offices historically asked for four) and the 8A extract, plus mutation-entry copies
- Certified land map from the Taluka Inspector of Land Records — boundaries must be settled first, which is why e-Mojani measurement often precedes an NA application
- Site plan and building plans (historically eight copies of each)
- NOCs: Gram Panchayat or municipal body, highway authority where the plot abuts a road, society no-dues certificate, and a Talathi certificate that the land is not under acquisition
- Tenancy-law permission (Sections 43/63 of the tenancy Acts) where the land carries those restrictions
Old-regime service standards — acknowledgment within 7 days, order within a month of premium payment, and the famous deemed-permission-in-90-days rule of Section 44(3) — belong to the deleted sections now, but they still describe how pending legacy files were meant to move. Constants that survive: the use must commence within the period the order states (lapse and reversion otherwise), conversions were to be reported to the Tahsildar within 30 days, and unauthorised conversion invites regularisation charges and penalties that can reach a multiple of the NA assessment, with restoration or demolition in the worst case. Certain lands were never convertible at all — protected forest, irrigation-project zones, coastal-regulation and controlled ribbon-development strips.
Premium and fees 2026 — with a worked example
The amended Section 47 replaces the old conversion tax and the annual NA assessment with a one-time premium on the land’s ready-reckoner (ASR) market value, sliced by plot size:
| Plot area | One-time premium (of ASR market value) |
|---|---|
| Up to 1,000 sq m | 0.1% |
| 1,001 – 4,000 sq m | 0.25% |
| Above 4,000 sq m | 0.5% |
The slabs do not distinguish between occupancy classes. Past conversions get regularised on the same logic: land converted on or before 31 December 2001 pays on 2001 ASR values; land converted between 1 January 2002 and 31 December 2025 pays on the ASR of the conversion year — with a one-year window from the February 2026 GR to pay, old NA-tax arrears waived for those who do, and recovery with penalty for those who don’t. The premium is shared between the state and the local body (70:30 with A-class municipal corporations keeping 30%, 50:50 with other corporations and councils, and a Zilla Parishad–Gram Panchayat split in village areas).
Worked example. A 2,000 sq m plot whose ASR market value is ₹1,500 per sq m is worth ₹30,00,000 on the reckoner. It falls in the 1,001–4,000 sq m slab, so the one-time premium is 0.25% × ₹30,00,000 = ₹7,500 — paid once, with no annual NA assessment afterwards.
One discrepancy stated plainly. Several current guides — including law-firm explainers — still publish the pre-amendment premium table: 50% of market value for agricultural → residential and 75% for commercial (with 20% for categories like residential → industrial), figures that trace to the 1969-rules regime. The amendment Act’s text, as read by the law-firm analyses of the Act and the 10 February 2026 GR, prescribes the 0.1–0.5% slabs above instead. On the same ₹30-lakh plot the old table would demand ₹15,00,000 against the new ₹7,500 — a 2,000× gap, which is exactly why you should check any demand note against the current slabs at the Planning Authority or Collectorate before paying, and get the receipt.
Expired, missing and forged orders
Expired: an order lapses if the permitted use didn’t commence within its stated period — typically one year — and the old rules provided for cancellation with the premium forfeited. A decades-old order for a plot still standing in sugarcane is scrap paper in a purchase; check the order date against what actually got built.
Missing from the record: a paper order with no 7/12 entry means the mutation was never made. Fixable — file it with the Talathi using the order and sanad — but until fixed, the official record says agricultural, and every downstream document inherits the defect.
Unpaid premium: an unpaid conversion charge becomes a recoverable due against the land. Ask the seller for the original payment receipt, not an assurance.
Forged: fake NA orders and sanads circulate wherever plotted layouts are sold. The two-step test costs under ₹50: match the order number against the 7/12 remarks entry on bhulekh, then RTI the issuing Collectorate to confirm the order exists in its register. A layout marketed as “NA plots” or “gunthewari regularised” with no order number on any 7/12 in the layout is the red flag it looks like.
An NA entry, a fresh ferfar, or a premium-recovery note can land on a 7/12 without anyone telling the owner. BhuMe watches your survey number, alerts you on WhatsApp when a mutation or notice touches it, and fetches the digitally signed 7/12, 8A and ferfar on demand — so the conversion status a buyer, a bank or a Collector’s demand note depends on is never a surprise to you.