Why a Marla Isn't the Same Size Everywhere in Pakistan
Ask two people what a Marla is and you might get two different, both defensible, answers. This isn't a mistake anyone is making — it's a genuine dual-standard situation that trips up a lot of property transactions.
The two standards
The Punjab revenue standard, used in official land records (registry, mutation, revenue department documents), defines 1 Marla as 272.25 sq ft — making 1 Kanal (20 Marla) equal to 5,445 sq ft. This traces back to older survey conventions still used in government paperwork.
The Lahore / private housing scheme standard, used by most modern private developers, defines 1 Marla as a rounder 225 sq ft — making 1 Kanal equal to 4,500 sq ft.
Why the gap is bigger than it sounds
225 vs 272.25 sq ft is a 21% difference. On a 10 Marla plot, that's the difference between roughly 2,250 sq ft and 2,722.5 sq ft — enough to matter when comparing a plot's advertised size against its revenue-record size, or when a construction cost estimate (typically quoted per sq ft) gets applied to the wrong figure.
Where this actually causes problems
The most common real-world issue is comparing a private housing scheme's advertised plot size against the same plot's entry in revenue records — they can look inconsistent purely because of which Marla standard each document used, not because anything is actually wrong. Always check which standard a specific document is using before treating two size figures as directly comparable.
Bigha and Biswa are even less standardized
If your paperwork mentions Bigha or Biswa, be extra careful — unlike the Marla/Kanal split, which is a clean two-standard situation, Bigha and Biswa sizes vary by region and era in ways that don't reduce to just two conventions. See our land area converter for the specific convention it uses, and treat any Bigha/Biswa figure as needing direct confirmation against your specific document's source.
Use the land area converter with the standard selector set correctly for your document, and when in doubt, convert both figures to square feet before comparing.
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