Dakhil kharej (namsari): how to get land into your name at the Malpot

A man in Lalitpur tried to sell a plot last year that he had "owned" since 2009. He had the rajinama, the receipt from the day he paid the registration tax, the whole file. At the Malpot office the staff pulled the record and it still listed the man he had bought it from, who had since passed away. The sale he had lined up collapsed. He had registered the land sixteen years earlier and never done dakhil kharej, so in the eyes of the record he was never the owner.

This is the most common land mistake in Nepal, and it is invisible until the moment it isn't. Registering a purchase and getting the land into your name are two different steps. People do the first, assume it covered the second, and find out otherwise only when they try to sell, mortgage, or pass on the land.

Two steps, not one

Nepal runs a deeds-registration system. The government records that a transaction happened; it does not by itself certify who owns what. That single fact is why two steps exist:

• Registration (रजिष्ट्रेसन / राजीनामा पारित). At the Land Revenue Office, the transfer deed is executed and "passed", with the office verifying the parties against its records. This is the step where the registration tax is paid, and it is the costly part of buying land.
• Dakhil kharej (दाखिल खारेज / नामसारी). The office then strikes off the old entry, updates its master field-book and ownership record (श्रेस्ता / मोठ) to your name, and issues a new lalpurja. Only after this does the official record show you as owner.

The legal hinge is the Land Revenue Act 2034, which lets the Malpot office register or update a record only when the land matches its existing field-book entry. That requirement is what makes the record-update consequential rather than a formality: the chain has to be unbroken for the next owner to transact.

What it costs: almost nothing

This is the part that surprises people, because the registration tax is so large that they assume namsari must carry a fee to match. It does not. From the Department of Land Management's official citizen charter:

Type of record update	Fee	Typical timing
Field-book update (श्रेस्ता दाखिल खारेज) after a passed deed	None	Usually same day
Inheritance namsari, within 35 days of death	None	After process completes
Inheritance namsari, after 35 days	Rs 10	After process completes
Will/bequest-based transfer, after 35 days	Rs 10	After process completes

Those figures are from the department's citizen charter, and the exact late fee can vary by the current schedule, so confirm it at your office; the takeaway holds either way. Contrast that with the registration tax, which is a percentage of the property's valuation and runs into lakhs on a typical Kathmandu plot, with a 25 to 35 percent concession when the land is registered in a woman's name. The full registration stack is its own subject, covered in the property registration costs post. The point here is narrow: the expensive part is registration; the namsari that actually puts the land in your name costs a rupee note, if anything.

The documents and the process for a purchase

For a straightforward purchase, the file you assemble is the same one that gets the deed passed and the record updated. Expect to bring:

• The current lalpurja (land ownership certificate)
• Citizenship certificates of both buyer and seller, originals and copies
• The current fiscal year malpot receipt proving land revenue is paid up to date
• A tax-clearance receipt if a house stands on the land
• The registered transfer deed (rajinama likhit)
• PAN, now commonly required for land transactions under tightened KYC rules (confirm with your office)
• The ward Ghar Bato Sifaris (road-access recommendation)

The sequence runs: agree terms and confirm the land is not frozen (rokka) and that tax is cleared, pay the seller through the bank with a voucher, prepare and submit the deed, pay the registration duty, have the office pass the deed, and then complete the record-update into your name. The official charter lists the registration step as same-day when documents are in order, and the record-update as usually same-day after that. In practice, allow a few working days, and longer if a subdivision (kittakat) is involved. Before any of this, the 9-document lalpurja checklist is what stops you buying a problem in the first place.

Namsari by inheritance is a different file

When land passes on a death rather than a sale, the deed is replaced by proof of who you are to the deceased. The charter and municipal ward checklists ask for:

• The original lalpurja and the current malpot receipt
• The death registration certificate (मृत्यु दर्ता)
• Proof of relationship to the deceased (नाता प्रमाणित), the same master document that unlocks bank, FD, and share transfers after a death
• A consent deed (मन्जुरीनामा) from co-heirs where more than one person inherits
• A ward recommendation of permanent address

For heirs beyond a spouse or children, the office can publish a public notice and run a site inspection before transferring, which is what stretches an inheritance namsari past the timeline of a clean purchase. Who is entitled to inherit in the first place, and the daughter's post-2007 share, sit in the inheritance and wills post. A gift within the family (बकसपत्र) is a third route, with its own concessional treatment covered in the gift tax post.

What skipping it actually costs

Failing to do namsari does not announce itself. The land sits in your possession, you pay nothing, and for years there is no friction. The bill arrives when you next need the record to work for you:

• You cannot cleanly sell. The buyer's office will pull a record that names someone else, and the chain breaks, exactly the Lalitpur case above.
• You cannot mortgage it. No bank lends against collateral the records do not show you owning, so the land is dead weight for a loan against property.
• You are exposed in a dispute or acquisition. If the land is acquired or contested, compensation and standing flow to the recorded owner.
• The fix gets harder with time. If the seller has died, emigrated, or become unreachable, reconstructing the transfer can mean producing the original parties or going through the courts.

A near-free step at the time of purchase turns into the single most expensive omission in a Nepali land file if you leave it. The asymmetry is the whole argument for doing it immediately.

Online now, and the office rename

The records are digitising, unevenly. The Department of Survey's Mero Kitta portal lets you view and print survey maps and field-book records and pay land tax online for offices that are onboarded, which at launch was most of the country's survey offices. On the Malpot side, LRIMS runs an public-access lookup at enabled offices. Note the split: Mero Kitta is the survey side (maps and field-books), while ownership and rokka records live with the Malpot office under LRIMS.

There is also a naming change in motion. Through 2026 the government has been renaming "भूमिसुधार तथा मालपोत कार्यालय" to "भूमि प्रशासन कार्यालय" (Land Administration Office) and devolving services like registration and namsari toward local governments. The rollout is phased and the effective status varies by district, so treat the office name and the exact online options as something to confirm locally rather than assume. The core namsari application is still, for most people, an in-person file.

What you actually need to know

• Registration is not namsari. Paying the registration tax and passing the deed is step one. Getting the record updated into your name, and a fresh lalpurja issued, is step two. You are not the recorded owner until step two is done.
• The namsari itself is nearly free. No fee for the record-update after a passed deed, Rs 10 for a late inheritance transfer. Cost is never the reason to skip it.
• Skipping it blocks your next move. No clean sale, no mortgage, weak standing in a dispute, and a fix that only gets harder as years and missing parties pile up. Finish the file at purchase.

Bought land but unsure whether the namsari was ever completed, or sorting an inheritance transfer with several heirs? Email parjanya57@gmail.com and I will lay out the documents your specific case needs.

This post is part of the Nepal Money Basics guide — the big-ticket home and land section.