This covers the FEMA/RBI framework that applies to NRIs buying property anywhere in India, plus the parts of the process — registration, stamp duty, and Power of Attorney execution — that play out through West Bengal’s own registration system. The underlying law (FEMA and the Income Tax Act) is national and set by the Reserve Bank of India and the Ministry of Finance, not by the state; nothing here is West Bengal-specific unless flagged as such.
What NRIs can and can’t buy
The governing framework is the Foreign Exchange Management (Acquisition and Transfer of Immovable Property in India) Regulations, 2018 (Notification No. FEMA 21(R)/2018-RB, dated 26 March 2018), which sits under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 and is consolidated in RBI’s Master Direction on Acquisition and Transfer of Immovable Property under FEMA. In plain terms:
| Category | NRI/OCI can buy? |
|---|---|
| Residential property | Yes — any number, no RBI approval needed |
| Commercial property | Yes — any number, no RBI approval needed |
| Agricultural land | No (purchase or gift) |
| Plantation property | No (purchase or gift) |
| Farmhouse | No (purchase or gift) |
| Any of the above, by inheritance from someone who lawfully held it | Yes — inheritance is the one route in |
This is a genuinely settled, stable rule — the general permission to buy residential and commercial property “in any number” without RBI approval has been the position for years and is repeated consistently across FEMA-focused legal and CA-firm commentary. The agricultural/plantation/farmhouse exclusion is equally firm, with inheritance as the only opening: an NRI who inherits agricultural land can hold it, but generally can only sell it on to a person resident in India, not to another NRI or OCI (per FEMA 21(R), as summarised in SBS and Company’s FEMA property regulations note).
Do you need RBI’s permission or a separate filing for an ordinary purchase? No. A standard NRI/OCI purchase of residential or commercial property falls under the automatic route and doesn’t require a report to RBI. Some older or lower-quality guides claim a “Form IPI within 90 days” filing is mandatory for every NRI property purchase — that’s not accurate for the ordinary case. Form IPI reporting applies to acquisitions outside the automatic route (for example, by other categories of foreign nationals, or in situations requiring specific RBI approval), not to a routine NRI/OCI purchase of residential or commercial property (SBS and Company). If your transaction is a normal purchase paid for through an NRE/NRO/FCNR(B) account, there’s no RBI form to file.
How you’re allowed to pay
FEMA is specific about the payment channel, not just the amount:
- Funds must arrive through normal banking channels — an inward remittance from abroad, or money already sitting in an NRE, NRO, or FCNR(B) account.
- Cash, traveller’s cheques, and foreign currency notes are not permitted payment methods for the purchase.
- Payment should go directly into the seller’s bank account — routing it through a third party’s account is against the spirit (and often the letter) of the FEMA payment rule.
This detail matters more than it looks: a technically-permitted purchase can still create a FEMA compliance problem if the money trail doesn’t run through the right account type, so it’s worth confirming with your bank or CA which of NRE/NRO/FCNR(B) is the right source account before wiring funds, not after.
Power of Attorney: the standard way to buy without flying in
Most NRIs buying in West Bengal aren’t in the country for the registration itself, and a Power of Attorney (PoA) is the normal, legal way to handle that — but the details matter:
- Use a specific/special PoA, not a general one. A PoA limited to the one property and one transaction is the safer, standard practice — a broad general PoA carries more risk if misused, and courts have historically been cautious about treating a GPA as a substitute for a registered conveyance of title.
- Get it properly authenticated. The PoA needs to be signed before, and attested by, either a notary plus apostille (for countries in the Hague Apostille Convention) or the Indian consulate/embassy in your country of residence (for non-Hague countries) — consulate attestation alone doesn’t substitute for the stamp duty step that follows.
- Stamp it in India within the deadline. Under the Indian Stamp Act, an instrument executed outside India must be stamped within three months of its first receipt in India — miss that window and the PoA can run into admissibility problems when it’s actually used at the registration office.
- Register the PoA itself where required, particularly if it’s being used to execute a sale deed — check the current requirement with the sub-registrar’s office or your lawyer, since registration requirements for PoAs used in property transactions have been tightened in various states over the years.
PAN and Aadhaar
PAN is effectively mandatory — you need one to be identified as the taxpayer of record on the transaction, to get credit for any TDS deducted (on a sale), and in practice most registration offices and banks will ask for it before processing a property transaction of any size. Apply for an NRI PAN well before you need it; it isn’t something to sort out at the registration counter.
Aadhaar is not a requirement for the purchase itself. Aadhaar eligibility is built around Indian residency, and most NRIs simply won’t have one — don’t let anyone tell you the deal can’t close without it. If you do hold an Aadhaar from an earlier period of residence, it isn’t a blocker either way for a standard NRI property purchase.
If you later sell: TDS under Section 195
This is where most NRI sellers get surprised, because the mechanics are different from a resident seller’s transaction:
- The buyer must deduct TDS on the full sale value, not on your capital gain — unless you’ve obtained a lower or nil TDS certificate under Section 197 from the Income Tax Department before the sale. Getting that certificate in hand before you sign anything is the single most useful piece of paperwork for an NRI seller, because without it the buyer withholds tax on the gross price and you wait for a refund.
- Long-term capital gains (property held over 24 months) are taxed at a flat 12.5% without indexation, following the Finance Act 2024 changes effective for transfers from 23 July 2024. Note the asymmetry: resident individuals and HUFs got a transitional option to instead pay 20% with indexation for property bought before that date — non-residents were not given that option, so an NRI seller is on the flat 12.5% rate regardless of when the property was originally acquired (cafornri.com’s 2026 NRI TDS guide).
- Short-term gains (held 24 months or less) are taxed at slab rates, which can run up to 30% for a non-resident.
- Surcharge and a 4% health-and-education cess apply on top of the base rate. Surcharge on long-term capital gains has been capped at 15% since the Finance Act 2022, regardless of the seller’s income slab — a detail worth confirming with your CA since it changes the effective rate materially at the top end.
- A procedural simplification is coming, not yet live: from 1 October 2026, a resident individual or HUF buyer will be able to deposit the TDS using their own PAN via a challan-cum-statement, without first obtaining a TAN — per coverage of the change in nobroker.in’s 2026 TDS guide. The underlying TDS rates and the buyer’s obligation to deduct correctly are unchanged; only the deposit mechanism for the buyer gets simpler after that date. If your sale closes before 1 October 2026, the buyer still needs a TAN in the usual way.
Repatriating the money after a sale
Whether you can send the sale proceeds abroad — and how much — depends on how the property was originally funded:
- Bought with NRE/FCNR(B) funds: proceeds can be repatriated up to the original investment amount, for a maximum of two residential properties. Any gain over that gets routed through the NRO channel.
- Bought with NRO funds, or beyond the two-property limit above: repatriation is capped at USD 1 million per financial year under RBI’s remittance facility for NRIs, and requires the standard tax-compliance paperwork — a chartered accountant’s certificate on Form 15CB and your own declaration on Form 15CA, filed before the bank processes the outward transfer.
- Agricultural land, plantation property, or a farmhouse sale does not carry the same repatriation facility — proceeds from those (where you were even allowed to hold them, typically via inheritance) generally need specific RBI approval to move abroad.
Keep every document from the transaction — sale deed, TDS certificates (Form 16A), the Section 197 certificate if you obtained one, Forms 15CA/15CB, and the bank’s repatriation advice — permanently. You’ll need them again if there’s ever a query on the remittance or a later capital-gains reconciliation.
What this guide doesn’t cover
FEMA and Indian tax rules change with each year’s Finance Act, and RBI periodically amends the Master Direction — the framework above reflects rules current as of August 2026, but a specific transaction still deserves a check with a chartered accountant or property lawyer, especially on: the exact repatriation documentation your bank will insist on, whether your specific country of residence has a tax treaty (DTAA) with India that changes the effective tax outcome, and any recent Finance Act amendment to the capital-gains or TDS provisions that postdates this article.
Sources: FEMA (Acquisition and Transfer of Immovable Property in India) Regulations, 2018 — Notification No. FEMA 21(R)/2018-RB, and RBI’s Master Direction on Acquisition and Transfer of Immovable Property under FEMA, as summarised and cross-checked across SBS and Company’s FEMA property note, Assetly’s FEMA rules guide, Aagarwalla & Associates’ FEMA overview, and India For NRI’s FEMA compliance guide; TDS and Section 195/197 detail from cafornri.com’s 2026 guide, Tax2win’s Section 195 guide, and nobroker.in’s 2026 TDS guide; repatriation mechanics cross-checked against Aspora’s repatriation guide and Finnovate’s repatriation explainer. All figures and thresholds checked August 2026.