Passport Affidavit & Annexures — which one you need, and why most of them need no notary at all

The rule most agents never mention

Start here, because it changes what you should be paying for. When the passport rules were simplified, the Ministry of External Affairs did not merely trim the paperwork. It removed the requirement to have it sworn.

Read that third line again, because it is the one that costs people money. An ordinary passport annexure is a plain sheet of paper that you sign yourself. No stamp paper. No notary. No magistrate. No fee to anybody. If a shop is charging you several hundred rupees to get an annexure notarised for a routine passport application, they are charging you for a step the Ministry expressly removed.

The same round of simplification swept away several things people still ask us for. Married applicants are not required to produce the old Annexure K or any marriage certificate. The application form was changed to require the name of only one parent and not both, so that single parents can apply for their children's passports. Orphaned children without a birth certificate or school record may submit a declaration from the Head of the Orphanage or Child Care Home. Sadhus and sanyasis may apply with the name of their spiritual Guru in place of a biological parent. And for date of birth, any one of eight acceptable documents will do — a birth certificate, an educational certificate, a PAN card or an Aadhaar card among them.

All nine annexures, in one table

These are the annexures Passport Seva currently publishes, with what each one is for. Note that the lettering is not continuous — B, E and K are not in the current set, which is why searching for "Annexure K" turns up years of outdated advice.

Two things to take from that table. First, most of these are declarations — you are stating facts about yourself and signing. Only Annexure F is framed as an affidavit, and that is dealt with separately below. Second, there is no "affidavit for passport" as a single document. What exists is a set of specific forms for specific circumstances, and the whole skill lies in picking the right one.

Which one applies to you

Find your situation below. If more than one applies, you need more than one annexure, and that is normal.

Annexure F — lost or damaged passport

This is the exception to everything said above. Annexure F is published as a specimen affidavit, not as a plain declaration, and it is used where a passport has been lost, stolen or damaged beyond use. Because it is framed as an affidavit, some Passport Seva Kendras do ask for it to be sworn, notwithstanding the general rule about self declarations.

What it has to establish is more than "I lost it". It records the particulars of the passport that is gone — its number, its date and place of issue, its validity — and the circumstances in which it was lost or damaged. Those particulars matter, because the passport office has to cancel the old document before it can issue a new one, and it can only cancel what it can identify.

Alongside it you will normally need a police report. Not a copy of a complaint you wrote, but the report from the police station of the area where the passport was lost. Where the passport was damaged rather than lost, the damaged passport itself is produced instead.

Annexure J — married applicants

A great deal of outdated advice still circulates about this, so it is worth stating plainly. Married applicants are not required to provide the erstwhile Annexure K or any marriage certificate. That requirement went with the simplification.

What replaced it is Annexure J — a joint declaration in lieu of a marriage certificate, signed by both spouses. It is used where a spouse's name is to be added to a passport. It is a declaration, not a certificate, and it does not require you to have registered your marriage in order to add your husband's or wife's name.

Two related points that save money. First, a woman changing her surname because of marriage does not need a Gazette notification or newspaper advertisements for the passport — the details given in the application are enough. The same applies to adding or removing a spouse's name after marriage or divorce, and to updating spouse details after remarriage. Second, and by contrast, a married woman who is still married and wishes to revert to her maiden name is treated as making a full formal name change, with everything that entails. That asymmetry surprises almost everyone.

Minors, single parents and special cases

Children's passports generate more annexure questions than every other category combined, mostly because family situations do not fit neatly into forms. The simplified rules went a long way towards fixing that.

Both parents consenting

The ordinary case. Annexure D is the declaration of the parent or guardian, and Annexure I affirms the particulars furnished about the minor. Straightforward, and neither needs a notary.

One parent not consenting, or not available

Annexure C is the declaration used where one parent has not given consent. This is the annexure for separated parents, for a parent who cannot be traced, and for situations where one parent simply will not sign. Combined with the change to the application form — which now requires the name of only one parent and not both — a single parent is no longer blocked from obtaining a passport for their child.

Children not born out of wedlock

The Ministry addressed this directly: for children not born out of wedlock, the applicant should submit only the relevant declaration annexure, and nothing further on that account. The point of the change was to stop unwed mothers being asked for documents that do not exist.

Orphans and children without a birth certificate

Where an orphaned child has neither a birth certificate nor a school record showing date of birth, a declaration given by the Head of the Orphanage or Child Care Home may be submitted instead. More generally, date of birth may be proved by any one of eight acceptable documents, including a birth certificate, an educational certificate, a PAN card or an Aadhaar card — so the absence of a birth certificate is rarely fatal.

Sadhus and sanyasis

A provision that exists precisely because the ordinary form assumes something that is not always true: sadhus and sanyasis may apply with the name of their spiritual Guru mentioned in the application in place of their biological parents' names.

Anything that does not fit

Appendix 12 covers special cases of minors requiring passports. If your situation is unusual — guardianship, custody orders, a child living with grandparents — this is usually where the answer lies, and it is worth asking rather than guessing.

Government employees — Annexure G and H

If you are employed by the central or a state government, a public sector undertaking or a statutory body, your file needs one more document than everybody else's, and there are two possibilities.

Annexure G is a No Objection Certificate — your department positively states that it has no objection to a passport being issued to you. Annexure H is a Prior Intimation Letter — you inform your department that you are applying, and produce proof that you did so. Which of the two applies is determined by your department's own rules and practice, not by your preference, so the first thing to do is ask your establishment or administration section which one they issue.

The practical difficulty here is rarely the form. It is getting a signature out of an office that is in no hurry. Start it early — before you book the appointment rather than after — because this is the one item in a government employee's passport file that you cannot accelerate by paying anybody.

Changing your name in a passport

This is where a genuine affidavit does come back into the picture, and where the amounts involved get larger — so it is worth being precise about when it applies.

Where no proof of change is needed at all. A name change following marriage, remarriage or divorce — a woman taking her husband's surname, a person adding a spouse's name, a divorcee removing one, a remarried applicant updating spouse details — needs only the details given in the application. No Gazette. No newspaper. Nothing sworn.

Where it is not treated as a name change at all. A spelling correction that does not change how the name sounds, the published example being D'Souza to De Souza, and a variation that matches your birth certificate. If your case is one of these, the entire apparatus is simply not engaged and you should not be sold it.

Where the full route applies. Every other name change. The requirement is a Gazette notification of the state government concerned or clippings of two newspapers — and, in addition, at least two public or school documents already issued in the name you now want. People routinely produce the first and are turned away for want of the second. Where newspaper advertisements are used, they must be inserted in two reputed newspapers, one local and one from the area of your permanent address, with the original newspapers produced when you apply. The affidavit accompanies that set; it does not replace it.

Where notarisation is still needed

Having spent this page telling you that most passport annexures need no notary, here are the three situations where one is genuinely required. If you are not in one of these, you should not be paying for notarisation on a passport annexure.

That third row deserves a word. If your document is going to a foreign embassy, a foreign university or a foreign employer, the ordinary Indian rule about plain-paper declarations is beside the point — the receiving country has its own requirements, and those almost always begin with a notarised document. The route is then notarisation, then authentication by the State Home Department or the SDM, then apostille by the Ministry of External Affairs for a Hague Convention country, or normal attestation followed by embassy legalisation for a country outside it.

What a declaration must contain

Each annexure has its own published wording, and the right approach is to follow it rather than to invent something. What every one of them shares is the following skeleton:

1. Who you are — full name exactly as it appears on the application and on your identity documents, parentage, date of birth and address.
2. Your capacity — whether you sign as the applicant, as a parent, as a guardian, as a spouse or on behalf of a department. The annexure is chosen by capacity, so this must match.
3. The specific facts that annexure exists to record — the missing passport's particulars for Annexure F, the marriage for Annexure J, the absence of the other parent's consent for Annexure C, the department's position for Annexure G or H.
4. The declaration itself — that the facts stated are true to your knowledge and that nothing material has been concealed.
5. Signature, place and date — signed in the same form as the signature on the application, which is a detail that causes more returns than it should.

On that last point: if your application is signed one way and your annexure another, a careful clerk will notice. Sign both the same way, and if your usual signature differs from the name printed on your documents, say so before the file is submitted rather than after.

Documents you need

Send photographs rather than typing anything out. We read the spelling off your documents ourselves — including whether there is a full stop after an initial and how the surname is capitalised — because an annexure that spells your name differently from your application is a returned file.

Why passport files get returned

Almost none of these are legal problems. They are clerical, and every one of them is avoidable if somebody checks the file before you go:

1. The wrong annexure. The single commonest cause. Annexure D where Annexure C was needed, or a declaration where an NOC was required. The annexure follows your circumstances, and guessing from a blog post written before the rules changed is how people guess wrong.
2. An annexure that no longer exists. People still arrive with Annexure K and a marriage certificate because that is what the internet told them. Neither is required.
3. The name spelt differently from the application. An initial expanded on one and not the other, a middle name present on one and absent on the other.
4. Signatures that do not match. The annexure signed one way and the application another.
5. Prior intimation with nothing to show it was given. A letter written the night before, with no receiving stamp, no acknowledgement and no email trail.
6. Annexure F without a police report, or with a copy of your own complaint rather than the report from the police station concerned.
7. A name change with only half the proof. The Gazette or the newspapers produced, but not the two public or school documents already issued in the new name.
8. Paying for notarisation that was never required — which does not get the file returned, but does get your money taken for nothing.

Time and cost

The annexure itself, remember, is a plain sheet of paper you sign — there is no government fee for it and no notary fee unless you are in one of the three situations named above. If a quote you have been given includes notarisation for a routine annexure, that is a line item worth questioning.

How to order it — six steps

All of it can be done remotely unless you would rather come in. Placing the order costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

1. Tell us the situation, not the form. "Child's passport, father is abroad", "adding my wife's name", "passport lost in the metro", "I work for the Railways". The annexure follows from that, and getting it right at this step is most of the value.
2. Send your documents. Photographs on WhatsApp are fine. We read the spelling of every name off the documents ourselves so the annexure matches the application exactly.
3. We tell you what you actually need. Which annexure or annexures, whether anything needs notarising, and — where it applies — that you need nothing from us at all. You approve before anything is drafted.
4. We draft it in the published wording. Your particulars inserted into the correct annexure, sent to you to read before anything is printed.
5. We check the whole file. The annexure against the application, the names against the documents, the signatures against each other — so the file is not returned at the counter.
6. Delivery, then payment. Soft copy the same day; hard copy by hand in Delhi NCR or by courier anywhere in India. You pay after the work is done.