What is Shajra?

The shajra kishtwar is the cadastral map of a village in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal and parts of north India. It draws each field with its khasra or killa number, so you can see where your plot sits and who its neighbours are. Elsewhere the same kind of map is simply called the naksha, village map or cadastral map.

The traditional shajra was drawn by hand on cloth (a latha) and kept by the patwari. Many states have now digitised these maps, so a scanned or vector version may be viewable on the state land-records or GIS portal — but the patwari’s copy is still what is used for demarcation.

Shajra nasab is a separate document: a pedigree table, part of the jamabandi file, tracing the family tree of the landholders in a village over generations. It is often used to show how an inherited share came down from a common ancestor.

Both matter in disputes. The shajra kishtwar fixes where the land is on the ground; the shajra nasab helps show whose land it is by descent.

Why it matters if you live abroad

A copy of the shajra kishtwar lets you match your khasra number to the exact field on a satellite image, and the shajra nasab is useful evidence when you inherit a share in family land.