Type “IGRS AP” into a search engine and the first few results are usually igrsap.org, apigrs.com, or igrsap.co.in. None of them is the government portal. They are private blogs that reproduce screenshots and, in some cases, ask you to enter property details on their own forms. The actual portal run by the Andhra Pradesh Registration and Stamps Department is registration.ap.gov.in, and it is the only place you should type a survey or document number.
That confusion is a fitting introduction to IGRS AP, because the portal is genuinely the one most AP property owners need and the one most people get lost in. This guide covers what it actually handles, how to pull an encumbrance certificate field by field, how it differs from Meebhoomi, and how to get past the errors that send people back to a tout.
What IGRS AP covers (and what it doesn’t)
IGRS AP is the registration side of property in Andhra Pradesh. Everything on it relates to documents that were registered at a Sub-Registrar Office. The four services that matter to most owners:
- Encumbrance Certificate (EC) search. A list of every registered transaction on a property over a date range: sales, gifts, mortgages, leases, and court attachments. This is the document people come for.
- Document and deed search. Retrieve a specific registered deed by its document number and year.
- Market value (guideline value). The government’s minimum registered value for a locality, which sets the floor for stamp duty.
- Section 22A prohibited property search. Whether a survey number is on the list that blocks registration, used for government, assigned, or endowment land.
What IGRS AP does not hold is the revenue record of who owns and cultivates the land. Your 1-B, Adangal, and Pattadar Passbook live on a separate portal. Mixing the two up is the single biggest reason people search the wrong place and conclude their records are missing.
IGRS AP vs Meebhoomi: which portal for what
Andhra Pradesh splits its property records across two systems, and they answer different questions.
IGRS AP (registration.ap.gov.in) is run by the Registration and Stamps Department. It is the authority on registered transactions: what was bought, sold, mortgaged, or gifted, when, and for how much.
Meebhoomi (meebhoomi.ap.gov.in) is run by the Revenue Department. It is the authority on land ownership and use: the 1-B Record of Rights, Adangal (Pahani), e-Passbook, village maps, and mutation status.
A quick word on Dharani, because the search results muddy this constantly. Dharani is Telangana’s portal, introduced after the 2014 bifurcation. Andhra Pradesh never adopted it. If your property sits in AP and a broker or a website points you to Dharani, they are sending you to the wrong state’s system. For AP, the pair you need is IGRS AP and Meebhoomi.
| Task | Portal to use |
|---|---|
| Encumbrance certificate | IGRS AP |
| Registered deed / document search | IGRS AP |
| Market value (guideline value) | IGRS AP |
| Section 22A prohibited list | IGRS AP |
| 1-B / Record of Rights | Meebhoomi |
| Adangal / Pahani | Meebhoomi |
| e-Passbook | Meebhoomi |
| Mutation status | Meebhoomi |
For a fuller account of the revenue side, including how to read your 1-B and what the bifurcation did to old records, our guide to managing AP property as an NRI covers Meebhoomi in depth. If you keep mixing up the two Meebhoomi records, our explainer on Adangal vs ROR 1-B untangles which one proves ownership and which one logs the crop, and our guide to Aadhaar seeding of AP land records covers how to tie your verified identity to the Meebhoomi record. The rest of this piece stays on IGRS AP.
How to search for an EC on IGRS AP, step by step
The EC search lives at registration.ap.gov.in under the Encumbrance Search (EC) service. Here is each field and what it expects.
1. District. Pick the district where the property is registered. After AP’s 2022 reorganisation into 26 districts, a property that was in West Godavari may now sit in Eluru or another new district. If you are unsure, choose by the town name, not the old district label you grew up with.
2. Sub-Registrar Office (SRO). This is the field that decides whether you get results. The EC is indexed by the SRO that registered the original deed, which is not always the SRO nearest the property now. Check the SRO name printed on your sale deed first. If you do not have the deed, start with the SRO that covers the property’s mandal and keep the adjacent ones ready as a fallback.
3. Search type. The portal lets you search by document number or by other property details. Document number is the precise route; the survey-number and party-name routes are for when you do not have the deed in hand. More on each below.
4. From and To dates. Set the widest range the SRO supports. Digitised records in AP generally run back to the early 1980s, with coverage thinning for older or rural SROs. For any purchase, request the longest period available so you capture the full chain of transactions.
5. CAPTCHA and submit. Enter the code and submit. A successful search returns Form 15, listing each registered transaction with its document number, nature, parties, and date. If nothing is registered for that property and period, you get Form 16, a nil-encumbrance certificate. Both download as PDFs.
One habit worth keeping: a nil result is not automatically good news. It can mean a clean title, or it can mean you searched the wrong SRO or too narrow a date range. Treat a blank result as a prompt to double-check the SRO before you trust it.
The three ways to search, and when to use each
By document number
Use this when you already hold a registered deed and want to confirm or retrieve it. AP document numbers run as a serial number with a registration year. Enter the serial number and year in their separate fields. If the portal rejects it, strip any leading zeros and try again, since format handling varies by SRO and era. This is the fastest and most reliable mode.
By survey number
This is the standard route when you do not have the document number. Enter the survey number exactly as it appears on the deed or on Meebhoomi, including any subdivision suffix such as 123/A. Enter only the number, with no area text like “acres” or “cents”. AP has resurveyed parcels under the YSR Jagananna Saswata Bhu Hakku scheme and earlier drives, so if a number returns nothing, check whether a resurvey reassigned it before assuming there are no records.
By party name
A name search returns deeds where the name appears as a buyer or seller. It is the least reliable mode and should be a last resort. The portal matches the name as typed at registration, so initials, missing middle names, a post-marriage name change, or a transliteration variant of a Telugu name (Reddy versus Redy, Rao versus Raо) will all miss. Try several spellings, and always confirm any hit against the survey number before relying on it.
Checking market value (guideline value)
The Market Value service on registration.ap.gov.in returns the government’s guideline value for a locality, selected by district, mandal, and village or ward. This is the figure that sets your stamp duty floor: duty is charged on the higher of the guideline value or the actual agreed price, so it is the number to check before you fix a sale price.
The Market Value tool and the EC search are separate utilities and sometimes fail independently of each other, so a market-value error does not mean the EC search is down. For how the guideline value feeds into the full 7.5% cost of registering in AP, see our Andhra Pradesh stamp duty guide.
Common IGRS AP errors and how to fix them
No records found when you expect them. Check the SRO first, every time. Records are tied to the registering SRO, and AP’s 2014 and 2022 boundary changes mean the right office may carry a name you do not recognise. Try the adjacent SROs for the district before concluding anything. If the SRO is right, widen the From date, because a result can be empty simply because the range starts after your records begin.
CAPTCHA keeps failing. The codes are case-sensitive and often hard to read. Refresh for a clearer code rather than guessing, and if the page has been open a while, reload it first so the session token is fresh. Chrome tends to behave better than Safari on the portal’s form elements.
Session timeout or a blank page after submit. The portal times out and resets the form. Write down your district, SRO, search type, and dates before you start, so a reset costs you seconds rather than a re-hunt. If submitting returns a blank page, clear cookies and retry in an incognito window, which clears most of these.
Document number rejected as invalid. Enter the serial number and year in their own fields, without slashes, and drop any leading zeros. If it still fails, switch to a survey-number search for the same SRO and a date range around the registration year.
You landed on a site that is not registration.ap.gov.in. If the page asks you to pay a fee to “download” an EC, or routes you through a form on igrsap.org, apigrs.com, or a similar domain, leave. The government EC search is free, and the only address you should trust is registration.ap.gov.in.
A note for NRIs and remote owners
The records side of IGRS AP works from anywhere. The EC search, document retrieval, market value, and the Section 22A list all open in a browser outside India, with no Indian SIM, login, or VPN required. The friction is rarely access; it is the SRO guesswork, the CAPTCHA loop, and knowing which of the two AP portals holds the record you actually want.
For the deeper walkthrough of reading an EC and ordering a certified physical copy, our EC online guide covers the document itself in detail.
Assetly pulls your AP records directly from the source, so the EC, the registered deeds, and your land records sit organised in one place without you fighting the portal, the CAPTCHA, or the lookalike sites for each one.
