Foundations of several civil engineering structures are required to be designed as anchor foundations. The analysis and design of deep anchors in clays are considered by very few researchers and investigators in the reported literature. Conspicuously this aspect appears to be inadequately investigated. The paper attempts to highlight the analysis of deep anchors in soft clays by proposing an idealized load transfer mechanism and the mode of failure of this soil-foundation system. The presently used foundation element for resting light structures on expansive soils, in the form of an underreamed pile, is proposed to be used as an effective deep anchor. With reference to this soil-under-reamed pile system, analytical as well as experimental studies are carried out. The analysis led to a simple and easy way to use equation for estimating the pullout load capacity of ground anchors, in clays of medium to soft consistency. In order to evaluate the validity of theoretical formulation, a detailed experimental program was undertaken. The model studies incorporated under-reamed pile models of three shaft diameters with under-reaming ratio of 2.5, four values of depth factors. The clay 2 soil used in studies had cu=0.24 kg/cm . The observed failure loads were compared with the computed values which revealed that, for under-reamed piles having length larger than 8 times the shaft diameter, there was very close agreement between the above two values.