Somebody has looked at two of your documents, seen your name written two different ways, and stopped. It happens at banks, at registrars, at passport offices, at universities, at the moment an insurance claim is filed. The fix is usually not a name change and almost never a Gazette notification — it is one short sworn statement saying that both names are you. This page explains exactly what that statement must contain, where it works, and the three places where it will not be enough on its own.
A one and the same person affidavit is a sworn statement in which you declare that two or more different names — all of which appear on documents that belong to you — refer to a single person, namely yourself. You make it on non-judicial stamp paper, you swear it before a Notary Public, and the notary attests it and enters it in the notarial register.
The essential thing to understand, and the thing that almost every agent gets wrong when quoting for it, is that nothing is being changed. You are not adopting a new name. You are not abandoning an old one. You are not asking anybody's permission. You are simply putting on oath a fact that has always been true: that the person the school certificate calls one thing and the Aadhaar card calls something slightly different is the same human being, and that human being is you.
Understanding that one point saves most people a great deal of money, because it means the entire machinery of a formal name change — the newspaper advertisement, the Gazette notification, the supporting documents in the new name — is simply not engaged. That machinery exists to give the world notice that something has changed. Here, nothing has.
Rajesh Kumar. Your PAN
card says Rajesh Kumar Sharma. Your bank passbook, opened years ago from a form somebody
else filled in, says R. K. Sharma. Three documents, three names, one person. Nobody
minded for fifteen years. Then you applied for a home loan and the bank's verification team noticed.
The document that resolves this in an afternoon is a one and the same person affidavit.
Photograph both documents and send them on WhatsApp. We will tell you whether one affidavit settles it, or whether the office in question is going to want the underlying record corrected instead. There is no charge for the answer and no obligation to order.
Order Now — Free WhatsApp usThese two documents are confused with each other constantly, and the confusion is expensive. They do opposite jobs.
Nothing changes. Two names already exist on your papers and both are yours.
Something changes. You are giving up one name and taking another from today.
The test is simple, and you can apply it yourself in one sentence. Ask: am I telling the world something new, or am I explaining something that was already true? If you have married and taken a new surname, or decided you wish to be known differently, something is new — that is a name change. If your marksheet and your Aadhaar have simply never agreed with each other and you have lived with it for twenty years, nothing is new — that is a one and the same person affidavit.
Tell us what the two documents say and what the office asked for. If it is genuinely a name change we will say so, and if it is only a mismatch we will say that too — and the second answer is the cheaper one for you.
Order Now — ₹400 Read: name change affidavitIn practice almost every case we see falls into one of these eight. If yours is on the list, one affidavit is very likely the whole answer.
R. Kumar against Rajesh Kumar. Extremely common in South India, where
initials carry the father's name or the village name, and extremely common everywhere on bank
records opened decades ago. The affidavit expands the initial and ties it to the full form.
Priya Sharma against Priya Devi Sharma. Schools frequently record the
full name while Aadhaar enrolment took whatever the applicant wrote that day. Nobody notices until a
passport or a property transfer is involved.
Mohammed, Mohammad, Muhammad. Lakshmi and
Laxmi. Sanjay and Sanjai. These arise from transliteration —
a name written originally in Hindi, Urdu, Tamil or Bengali and then rendered into English by
different clerks on different days, each of them doing nothing wrong.
Sharma Rajesh against Rajesh Sharma. Very common on school records in
some states, where registers are kept surname-first. The name is identical; only the order differs,
and a machine comparing the two strings will report a mismatch.
The degree certificate, the school records and the old bank account carry one name; the passport, the new account and the employer's file carry another. This is dealt with in its own section below, because there is a choice to be made about which document to use.
Your own name matches perfectly but your father's does not, so the verification still fails. This too has its own section below — it is common enough to deserve one.
Systems with character limits truncate. A long name gets cut on a PAN card or a bank record, and the truncated version then has a life of its own for the next fifteen years.
A name used at home was written on a school admission form by a parent, and it stayed. Twenty years later the person has one name on their degree and another on everything else. Nothing was ever changed; two names simply coexisted from the start.
Every variation covered in one document, drafted in the wording your office accepts, on the correct stamp paper, notarised. From ₹400, usually same day. Nothing payable when you order.
Order Now — ₹400 +91 98913 43962The same document is called for in a surprising number of places. What differs is how readily each one accepts it, and that is worth knowing before you walk in.
| Where | Why it comes up | How readily it is accepted |
|---|---|---|
| Banks and NBFCs | KYC refresh, a loan file, an old account opened in a different form of the name, a cheque returned for a signature-name mismatch | Usually accepted with ID. KYC is the bank's own policy, so a sworn declaration plus proof normally satisfies it. |
| Property registration | A sale deed where the buyer's name differs from the name on their PAN or an earlier title document in the chain | Generally accepted, and often specifically demanded by the sub-registrar before registration proceeds. |
| Schools, boards and universities | Applying with a marksheet that does not match the identity document, transcripts, migration and duplicate certificates | Widely accepted; many institutions have their own prescribed wording, which we will follow if you send it. |
| Insurance claims | The policy carries one form of the name and the claimant's ID another — often discovered at the worst possible moment | Accepted, and usually the fastest route, because reissuing the policy is not practical mid-claim. |
| Pension and family pension | Service records and the bank account disagree; life certificate verification fails on the name | Accepted alongside the service record. Departments differ, so confirm the wording they want. |
| Shares, demat and IEPF claims | Old physical share certificates in a name that does not match the current PAN and Aadhaar | An affidavit is part of the set, but see the next section — the registrar will want more than the affidavit. |
| Employment and background checks | A verification agency comparing a degree with a PAN and reporting a discrepancy | Accepted almost always; this is exactly the objection the document was built for. |
| Courts and legal proceedings | Establishing that a party named in an older document is the person before the court | Accepted as sworn evidence, subject to whatever the court itself directs. |
| Passport office | Supporting documents carrying different forms of the name | Depends on the difference — see below. A variation that matches your birth certificate is not treated as a name change at all. |
| EPFO / provident fund | UAN, Aadhaar and the employer's record disagree, and withdrawal or transfer is blocked | Supporting evidence only — see the next section. EPFO works from its own document list. |
Two patterns run through that table. Private and institutional bodies — banks, insurers, employers, schools — accept the affidavit readily, because what they need is something sworn they can place on file and rely on. Statutory systems that maintain their own register — EPFO, the share registrars, the passport office — want documentary proof from a prescribed list, and treat the affidavit as something that accompanies that proof rather than replaces it.
The wording that a sub-registrar wants is not the wording a university wants, and neither is what an insurer wants. We draft for the destination, which is why we ask about it before we write a word.
Order Now — Free WhatsApp usThis is the section most pages about this document leave out, and it is the one worth reading twice. An affidavit is powerful, but it is not a master key. In three systems you will need something more, and knowing that in advance saves a wasted trip.
If your name on the UAN, on Aadhaar and in the employer's records do not agree, withdrawal and transfer get blocked, and people naturally reach for an affidavit. EPFO does not work that way. Corrections are made through a Joint Declaration, which covers eleven parameters — name, gender, date of birth, father's or husband's name, relationship, marital status, date of joining, reason for leaving, date of leaving, nationality and Aadhaar number.
For the name field, EPFO works from a list of roughly twenty accepted documents — passport, birth certificate, driving licence, PAN and the like. Where it is a full name change rather than a correction, it asks for a Gazette notification of the new name along with a supporting document. An affidavit on its own is not on that list.
There is exactly one place EPFO specifically contemplates an affidavit, and it is not the name field: for a date of birth correction it will consider a medical certificate issued by a Civil Surgeon after examining the member, supported by an affidavit on oath duly authenticated by a competent court. Note the words "competent court" — that is a court-authenticated affidavit, not an ordinary notarised one.
And there is a procedural point that catches people out entirely: the Joint Declaration is joint. Your employer has to approve it before it goes anywhere, and it then passes through the field office — initiated by a dealing assistant or section supervisor, verified by a section supervisor or accounts officer, and approved by an officer at RPFC or APFC level. If you have left that employer, securing their approval is usually the slow part, not the paperwork.
Old share certificates are a classic case: bought in the 1990s in one form of a name, and the holder's PAN and Aadhaar today say something slightly different. Where the name on the certificate does not match PAN or Aadhaar, the company or its registrar and transfer agent will typically want a complete set — a request letter explaining the reason, an affidavit, an attested marriage certificate or Gazette notification where one applies, a self-attested and notarised copy of the PAN, a self-attested and notarised address proof, and the original share certificate.
So the affidavit is genuinely part of the answer here — but only part. Going to an RTA with the affidavit alone will not move the file.
The passport rules draw a line that works in your favour more often than people expect. A spelling correction that does not change how the name sounds — the published example is D'Souza to De Souza — is not treated as a change of name at all. Neither is a variation that matches your birth certificate. If your mismatch falls in either class, the change-of-name machinery is simply not engaged.
But if the difference is more than that, the passport office wants what it wants: a Gazette notification of the state government concerned, or clippings of two newspapers, together with at least two public or school documents already issued in the name you are claiming. An affidavit supports that set; it does not substitute for it.
Send us the rejection message or the checklist you were given. We will tell you exactly which documents that office needs, which of them we can prepare, and which you will have to obtain yourself. The answer is free either way.
Order Now — Free Passport documentationA one and the same person affidavit that gets accepted is short and precise. Length is not a virtue here — a clerk is checking for specific elements, and every extra sentence is one more thing for them to query. It normally contains the following:
The second element is where most template affidavits downloaded from the internet fall down. They list names in the abstract — "I am also known as X and Y" — without saying which document carries which. The office that raised the objection is looking at two specific papers, and it wants the affidavit to address those two specific papers. Tie each name to its document and the query usually ends there.
Short list, and it is genuinely short — this document adds no paperwork of its own.
| Document | Why it is needed |
|---|---|
| Every document carrying a different version of the name | This is the heart of it. Each variation must be quoted exactly as that document prints it, so we need to see each one. |
| Aadhaar or another government photo ID | Establishes who is swearing the affidavit |
| Proof of address | Your address is part of how you are identified in the affidavit |
| Proof of date of birth | Your age is a required particular in the body of the affidavit |
| The query or checklist you received (if you have one) | So the wording answers the objection that was actually raised, rather than a general one |
| Marriage certificate (only if maiden and married names are involved) | Annexed so the reason for the second name is supported rather than merely asserted |
Send photographs rather than typing the names out. We read the spelling off the document itself,
character for character, including whether there is a full stop after an initial and whether a
surname is capitalised. That sounds pedantic until an affidavit comes back because it said
R.K. Sharma where the passbook says R K SHARMA.
Photograph each document that carries a different version of your name and send them across on WhatsApp. We transcribe them ourselves so nothing is mistyped, and come back with the draft for your approval.
Order Now — ₹400 WhatsApp usTwo mechanical details, and between them they account for a large share of all rejections.
The stamp paper. The affidavit is executed on non-judicial stamp paper. Stamp duty on affidavits is fixed by each state, so the correct value differs across India, and the value your receiving office expects differs with the use. In Delhi, an affidavit for ordinary private use is normally sworn on ₹10 or ₹20 stamp paper; where a bank, a sub-registrar or a government office has specified ₹100, that is what should be used. A lower value than expected means a return; a higher one is harmless but wasteful. We ask where it is going before we print, which is why.
The notarisation. The affidavit is sworn before a Notary Public appointed under the Notaries Act, 1952. The notary administers the oath, attests the document, affixes the notarial seal and enters it in the notarial register against a serial number. That register entry is not a formality — it is what allows the affidavit to be verified years later if anybody questions it, which for a document you may produce for a decade is worth having.
This deserves its own section because it is one of the commonest cases and it is handled slightly differently. Your own name matches perfectly across every document, but your father's name is written one way on your school certificate and another way on your Aadhaar — and the verification fails all the same, because parentage is one of the fields being compared.
The affidavit here does two things at once. It declares that the two versions of your father's name refer to one and the same person, and it declares that that person is your father. Where possible we also tie it to a document of his — his own Aadhaar or PAN — because an affidavit that can be checked against something is stronger than one that cannot.
Where this is accepted readily: banks, insurers, schools and boards, employers, and most private verification. Where you should expect to be asked for more: the passport office and government departments maintaining their own registers, which will often want the underlying record corrected rather than explained. If your father is available and the error is on a record that can still be corrected, correcting it is the better long-term answer.
We draft it as one document covering every variation — yours, your father's, or both — rather than making you swear two or three separate affidavits. From ₹400.
Order Now — Free Joint affidavitA woman who has taken her husband's surname will spend the rest of her life holding two sets of documents. Her degree, her school records, her PAN in many cases and any account opened before the wedding carry her maiden name. Her passport, her new accounts and her employer's file carry her married name. Nothing is wrong; both are hers.
There is a real choice here, and it is worth making deliberately rather than by default:
In practice most people need both, in sequence: the name change for the records that can be updated, and the affidavit to bridge the ones that cannot. And there is one important exemption worth knowing — for a passport, a change of surname on marriage needs no Gazette notification and no newspaper advertisement; the details in the application are enough. That single rule saves a great many women several thousand rupees.
Tell us which documents carry which. We will tell you which of them are worth correcting and which are better bridged with an affidavit — and there is no charge for that answer.
Order Now — ₹400 Name change affidavitAn affidavit is a patch. It does not change anything; it explains. That means you will produce it again, and again, every time a new office notices the same difference. For some mismatches that is entirely reasonable. For others it is worth spending a little more once and never dealing with it again.
| Your situation | Better answer | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Degree or school certificate differs from your ID | Affidavit | Boards and universities rarely reissue, and they do not need to. Bridge it and keep the affidavit safely. |
| PAN and Aadhaar disagree | Correct the record | Both are correctable, both are compared constantly by banks and tax systems, and every future mismatch flows from this one. |
| A single old bank account in a different form of the name | Affidavit | One account, one objection, one document. Correcting it is possible but rarely worth the branch visits. |
| Name on the UAN does not match Aadhaar | Correct the record | EPFO works from its own document list and needs employer approval — an affidavit alone will not clear it. |
| Spelling variation that matches your birth certificate | Often nothing at all | The passport rules do not treat this as a change of name. Check before you buy anything. |
| Maiden name on pre-marriage documents | Both | Update what can be updated; bridge the degree and other permanent records with the affidavit. |
| Truncated name on a card because of a character limit | Correct the record | It will keep happening on every new system that reads that card. |
We will give you this assessment for your own situation before you order anything, and if the honest answer is "correct your PAN, you do not need an affidavit at all", that is what you will hear. It costs us one order and earns the next three.
Describe the two documents in one line. We will tell you which is cheaper over the next five years, not just today — and if the answer is that you need nothing from us, we will say that.
Order Now — Free PAN correction Aadhaar updateRejections are almost never about the law. They are about these six things, and every one of them is avoidable:
And the seventh, which is not a drafting failure at all: producing an affidavit at an office that was always going to require the underlying record to be corrected. That is the EPFO and share registrar situation described above, and it is why this page spends a whole section on it.
| What | How long | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| One and the same person affidavit, drafted and notarised | Same day | From ₹400, including stamp paper and notarisation |
| Covering several name variations in the same affidavit | Same day | No extra charge — it is one document either way |
| Hard copy by courier outside Delhi NCR | 2 – 4 days | Courier at actuals |
| Correcting the record instead (PAN, Aadhaar) | Days to a few weeks | Quoted separately — the government fee is fixed by them, not by us |
One honest note. If somebody has quoted you several thousand rupees for this document, ask them what exactly is being published or filed for that money. This is a drafting, stamp paper and notarisation job. There is no government fee, no newspaper advertisement and no Gazette — and if a quote includes those, either your situation is genuinely a name change, or the quote deserves a question.
The whole thing is done remotely unless you would rather come in. Placing the order costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
From ₹400, usually same day, delivered anywhere in India. Free to order, free to ask, and we will tell you if you do not need us at all.
Order Now — ₹400 +91 98913 43962 WhatsAppSend us both and we will tell you in one line whether an affidavit settles it or the record needs correcting. Order online in a minute — nothing payable in advance, and you pay only after the work is done.
Two doors, both free. Clients search a factual directory of enrolled advocates. Advocates apply to be listed on it — no fee, no commission, nothing paid in either direction.
Search Bar Council enrolled advocates by what your matter is about, by court, or by city. Searching and sending a request are both free.
Enrolled advocates anywhere in India can apply to be listed. Your entry is published only after we verify your enrolment number with your State Bar Council.
This directory carries no ratings, no reviews, no rankings and no fees — only the factual particulars the Bar Council of India permits, published at each advocate's own request. Browse the network · Terms for Advocates