Your property-related legal queries answered by S.C. RAGHURAM, Partner, RANK Associates, a Chennai-based law firm

I have a piece of land at Korattur in my wife’s name.

She received the land from her father through a gift deed seven years ago. He owned this land for 30 years and we have all pertaining land documents of the past 40 years. We changed the following in our name: town survey land register, property tax, water tax, documents, EB. We also applied for a building approval through a licensed survivor in Ambattur Municipal are but the land belongs to Gramma Natham (mentioned in TSLR). Is this equal to a patta land?

After approval, are we eligible to apply for a home loan?

Do we need to get any additional documents from the Govt?

Srini Vasan

Chennai

‘Grama Natham’ means village house site. The same can be used for residential purposes and can also be freely transferred from one person to another. The restriction is that the same can be used only for a single dwelling unit and the land cannot be exploited commercially i.e., cannot be used for construction of flats. TSLR is enough and the same is synonymous to patta. Grant of loan by a bank against the security of natham land would depend on their internal policy.