A clear, step-by-step guide to legally changing your name in Puducherry. Affidavit, newspaper notice, the two Gazette routes, real fees, documents and timeline, all checked against the official Puducherry Government pages.
A quick walkthrough of the affidavit and the two gazette routes, and how the Puducherry name correction service works.
In this video, the YourDoorstep team explains the full name change procedure in Puducherry: which Gazette to choose, the documents you need, the real fees, and how we handle the whole process at your doorstep.
Puducherry may be a small Union Territory, but changing your name here follows the same clear legal path as the rest of India, and the best part is that you don't need to visit any office. Citizens of Puducherry can use either the Puducherry State Gazette or the Central Gazette of India. Neither is a fully online application, the Central fee is paid online on BharatKosh and the published notice is downloaded online, but the file itself travels by post or courier, and the Puducherry one is handed in at the Government Central Press. Whether you live in Puducherry town, Karaikal, Mahe, or Yanam, we assist you right at your doorstep. The Name Change Procedure in Puducherry covers your name change on all kinds of documents, from ID proofs like your Passport, PAN card, Aadhaar card, and Voter ID, to school and educational certificates, land and property papers, and any other record you need updated.
Definition: A gazette notification is an official notice published in a Government Gazette (the Puducherry State Gazette or the Gazette of India) that turns your name change into a public, legally recognised record accepted by banks, UIDAI and government departments.
To change your name in Puducherry, do three things. First, make a notarised affidavit with your old and new name. Second, on the Central route only, publish one advertisement in an English daily under a Public Notice heading. Third, apply for a Gazette notification. You can use the Puducherry State Gazette (fee from Rs 135, published in about three weeks) or the Central Gazette of India (Rs 1,100 for adults, Rs 1,700 for minors, valid all over India).
Puducherry is one of the few places in India where a citizen genuinely has two gazettes to choose from, and where the local one is a real, documented, cheap option rather than a myth.
Most states will tell you their gazette is for government notifications only. Puducherry is different. The Directorate of Stationery and Printing publishes a dedicated Change of Name Procedure page, with a fee, a document list, a turnaround and an address to walk into. And you can read the results: real citizens' name-change notices appear in the Announcements supplement of the weekly Ordinary Gazette, a dozen or more to an issue, from Puducherry town and from Karaikal.
| Point | Puducherry State Gazette | Central Gazette of India, Part IV |
|---|---|---|
| Published by | Directorate of Stationery & Printing, Government Central Press, Thattanchavady, Puducherry-605009 | Department of Publication, Civil Lines, Delhi-110054 |
| Open to a private individual? | Yes, with a published procedure and no application form, a plain written request to the Director | Yes, in person or by post or courier |
| Government fee | From Rs 135 (up to 120 words), plus Rs 11 for every 10 words beyond 120 | Rs 1,100 adult, Rs 1,700 minor, per the published guidelines, paid on BharatKosh |
| Newspaper advertisement | Not mentioned at all in the official procedure | One advertisement, in original, English or Hindi, under a Public Notice heading |
| Documents | Original notarised affidavit, attested ration card, attested birth certificate, attested copy of anything named in the affidavit | Undertaking, original newspaper, proforma in duplicate with two witnesses, CD, similarity certificate, photos, ID, request letter |
| Time to publish | Two to three weeks, per the Directorate's own wording | Roughly a month, per the Department's own wording |
| Where accepted | Within the UT. Offices outside Puducherry often ask for the Central one | Across India and abroad, passport, PAN, Aadhaar, banks, PSU employers, embassies |
The Government Central Press in Puducherry has been printing since 1816, with a Tamil section added in 1828, and the gazette's masthead still carries both languages of its history: "The Gazette of Puducherry / La Gazette de L'État de Poudouchéry". It is published today in Tamil and English.
| Office | Address | Phone |
|---|---|---|
| Directorate of Stationery & Printing | Government Central Press Campus, Industrial Estate, Thattanchavady, Puducherry-605009 (dsp@py.gov.in) | 0413-2250482 / 0413-2250478 |
| Where you submit a name change | Section Holder, PPC Section, Government Central Press, Thattanchavady (Post), Puducherry-605009 | 0413-2252610 |
| Government Branch Press, Karaikal | Kottucherry, Karaikal-609609 | 04368-265414 |
| Government Branch Press, Mahe | Civil Station, Mahe-673310 | 0490-2334171 |
| Yanam | No branch press is listed for Yanam anywhere on the Directorate's site | None |
The gazette archive is public and browsable by year, month and category at styandptg.py.gov.in, back to 2017 on the current site and further on archive.org. It is browsable, not keyword-searchable, the site's own "Search Gazette" menu item is a dead placeholder that goes nowhere, so note your publication date and issue number when your notice appears.
Almost any Indian citizen can do it, as long as the reason is honest. You are eligible if:
Common accepted reasons: marriage, divorce or going back to your maiden name, spelling mistakes in old records, religious conversion, numerology or astrology, adoption, gender change, or simply a personal choice to be known by a new name.
Three steps if you go Central. Two if you only need the Puducherry State Gazette, because that route asks for no newspaper advertisement at all.
A sworn statement on stamp paper with your old name, new name, father's or husband's name, address and reason, signed before a Notary Public. Both routes start here.
Central route only. One advertisement, in original, under a Public Notice heading, and in Puducherry the language of that paper matters more than anywhere else in India.
Either a written request to the Director, Government Central Press, Thattanchavady, or a full file to the Department of Publication in Delhi.
The affidavit is the base of the whole process. It states, on oath, that you are changing your name and why. It must include your current full name and new name, your father's or husband's name, your age and full address, the reason for the change, and a clear line that you are not changing your name for any wrong purpose.
Buy non-judicial stamp paper (usually Rs 10 or Rs 20), get the affidavit drafted, then sign it before a Notary Public or Oath Commissioner in Puducherry. Keep the original plus two or three copies.
Skip this step entirely if you are taking the Puducherry State Gazette. Its published procedure does not mention a newspaper advertisement at all.
For the Central Gazette you need one advertisement, not two, the guideline says "One recent advertisement Only in Daily Local National Newspaper (In Original)", and it must run under a Public Notice heading, not a "Change of Name" heading. The trap for Puducherry is the language: the guideline requires the matter to be "in Hindi or English language only", so a Tamil advertisement, in a Tamil daily, will not satisfy the Central Gazette however widely read it is. Use an English paper. See the newspaper section for why this catches so many people here.
Keep the notice short: your old name, new name, father's or husband's name, full address and the affidavit date.
Option A, Puducherry State Gazette. Send your request to the Director, Stationery and Printing, Puducherry, with the original affidavit (notary signed), an attested copy of your Ration Card (address proof), an attested copy of your Birth Certificate, an attested copy of any document named in the affidavit, and the fee (minimum Rs 135 for up to 120 words, plus Rs 11 for every extra 10 words). Publication happens within about three weeks.
Option B, Central Gazette of India. Send your file to the Department of Publication, Controller of Publications, Civil Lines, Delhi 110054, and pay the fee on the BharatKosh portal. The Central file also needs a typed proforma signed by two witnesses, a CD with the same text in MS Word, two photos, a self-attested ID copy, and a matching certificate. Documents should not be older than one year. When it is published, you download your notification from egazette.gov.in (Part IV, published every Saturday; the PDF needs no certification or stamp) yourself, and that copy is valid without any extra stamp.
This is where a Puducherry applicant loses more money than anywhere else in the process, and almost no page warns them.
One. Almost every guide in this niche tells you to publish in two newspapers, one English and one regional. The Department of Publication's own guidelines say the opposite: "One recent advertisement Only in Daily Local National Newspaper (In Original)", and the adult guideline repeats it, the change "should be advertised in one of the daily local leading newspapers." One advertisement. In original. And it must appear under a Public Notice heading; the guidelines specifically say it "should not be advertised in Change of Name heading", which is exactly where a classifieds desk will file it if you do not insist.
And for the Puducherry State Gazette, the answer is zero. The Directorate's published procedure does not mention a newspaper advertisement at all.
The Central Bureau of Communication's empanelment panel for Puducherry lists seven publications: Malai Malar, Tamizh Murasu, Namathu Murasu, Thanthi, Dinamalar and Dinakaran, all Tamil, and Standard Post, the only English daily on the panel. There is no Hindi title, no French title, no Malayalam and no Telugu on it.
Two things follow. If you are taking the Central route from Puducherry, your advertisement needs to be in English, and in practice that usually means an English daily circulating locally rather than one on the state panel, which is perfectly fine, because CBC empanelment governs eligibility for government advertising and is not a legal requirement for your notice. The Department asks for a "daily local leading newspaper", and keeps no approved list. And if your name change is only for local records, the state route sidesteps the whole question.
Keep the complete original page with the masthead and date readable. The Department asks for the newspaper in original, and the minor guideline is explicit that it wants "the full page of the newspaper". Buy two or three copies of that day's paper at the stand.
The two routes want different things. Mixing the two lists is the most common reason a Puducherry file gets sent back.
Straight from the Directorate's published procedure, four documents plus the covering request, and one of the four is the item no competitor mentions.
| Document | Notes |
|---|---|
| Original affidavit, signed in the hand of a Notary Public | The Directorate's own wording. Original, not a copy |
| Attested copy of the Ration Card | Used as residence proof. No other guide lists this, and a Puducherry applicant who turns up without it is turned away |
| Attested copy of the Birth Certificate | Required in the state route |
| Attested copy of any document named in the affidavit | If your affidavit cites a marksheet or a marriage certificate, attach it |
| A written request addressed to the Director | There is no prescribed form and no form number, anyone selling you "Form 1" for this has invented it |
| Document | Notes |
|---|---|
| Undertaking in the Department's proforma | In original, signed in your old name |
| Original newspaper carrying the notice | One paper is enough. The full original page, under a Public Notice heading, see the language trap below |
| Prescribed proforma, two typed copies | Signed in the old name, with the full details of two witnesses |
| CD with the print matter in MS Word | Without the witness portion |
| CD certificate | Signed by you, declaring hard copy and soft copy match |
| Two passport-size photos | Self-attested |
| Photo ID for the old name, plus address proof | Passport, Aadhaar, ration card, voter card, driving licence, PAN, birth certificate or 10th/12th certificate. Utility bills must be under 3 months old |
| Self-attested photo ID of each witness | Listed separately and commonly forgotten |
| Request letter with the BharatKosh receipt | Typed on A4 |
| Marriage certificate / divorce decree | If applicable |
| Magistrate-attested affidavit | Where you adopt a surname different from your father's or mother's, or add one you never had |
Government fees first, separated from what a service provider charges. Every figure below is what the government publishes, not a package price.
| Item | Published fee |
|---|---|
| Puducherry State Gazette | From Rs 135 (up to 120 words), plus Rs 11 for every 10 words beyond 120. Note the fee conflict flagged above, the Directorate's FAQ page says Rs 60 and Rs 5 per word |
| Central Gazette, adult in India | Rs 1,100 |
| Central Gazette, minor in India | Rs 1,700 |
| Central Gazette, adult living abroad | Rs 3,500 |
| Central Gazette, minor living abroad | Rs 5,100 |
| Adopting a name of another religion without converting | Rs 1,100 + Rs 250 = Rs 1,350 |
| Change of religion (actual conversion) | Rs 1,700 |
| Public notice, or name and gender | Rs 1,400 |
| Adoption of a child | Rs 1,700 per case |
| Correcting a name on a birth certificate, Pondicherry Municipality | Application Rs 1, correction fee Rs 10 |
| Aadhaar name update afterwards | Rs 75 at an enrolment centre, per UIDAI's current charge sheet |
| Item | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Stamp paper and notarisation | Varies. Puducherry publishes a Rs 4.50 stamp duty and Rs 20 registration fee for a declaration or affidavit presented for registration at a Sub-Registrar office, but a name-change affidavit is normally notarised, not registered, and no official Puducherry figure exists for that denomination. Treat any quoted number as the vendor's or the notary's, not the government's |
| Affidavit drafting | Varies by lawyer or agent. Not a government charge |
| Newspaper advertisement (Central route only) | Varies by paper and word count. Commercial rate cards for Pondicherry editions run from roughly Rs 90 to Rs 550 per word plus GST, indicative, not government |
| Courier to Delhi (Central route) | Ordinary Speed Post or courier rates from Puducherry |
"Rs 250 for each extra alias name." No. This is the single most-copied error in the niche, and it was on this page until we checked the guideline. The Rs 250 is a one-time add-on where you adopt a name or surname associated with another religion while remaining in your own religion, Rs 1,100 + Rs 250 = Rs 1,350, with a declaration that you are not changing your religion. There is no per-alias charge in any official schedule.
"NRIs pay Rs 7,500 to Rs 9,000." No. The published fee for an Indian living abroad is Rs 3,500 for an adult and Rs 5,100 for a minor. The higher numbers are an agent's service price presented as a government charge.
"The Puducherry state gazette costs Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,500." No. The Directorate publishes Rs 135 as a minimum. A page quoting four figures for the state gazette has never opened the Directorate's site.
Only two of these numbers come from a government source. We have marked which.
| Stage | Time | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Affidavit and notarisation | 1 to 2 days | Practice, not a published figure |
| Newspaper publication (Central route) | 1 to 3 days | Practice, not a published figure |
| Puducherry State Gazette | Two to three weeks | The Directorate's own wording: publication is made "within three weeks of submission of request with all the details", and its Citizen Charter says "two to three weeks" |
| Central Gazette of India | Roughly a month | The Department's own wording: "approx. a month time period is required as heavy posts are received throughout India". No service-level commitment is published |
Plan for longer end to end if you are using a service provider, because courier time, follow-ups and any objection sit on top of the printing queue.
The Gazette does not update anything by itself. It is the proof you carry to each office, and in Puducherry a couple of those offices are not where you would expect.
| Record | What actually happens |
|---|---|
| Aadhaar | A name change is a demographic update: Rs 75 at an enrolment centre, or free if done at the same time as a biometric update. A document update on the myAadhaar portal is free until 14 June 2027. UIDAI applies a lifetime cap on how many times a name may be updated, check on myAadhaar before you file rather than after |
| PAN Card | Correction through Protean (NSDL) or UTIITSL |
| Passport | Re-issue, but at which office depends on your district. Puducherry and Karaikal fall under RPO Chennai, Mahe under Kozhikode, Yanam under Visakhapatnam. See the district table below |
| Driving Licence | A driving licence name change is handled nationally through Sarathi at sarathi.parivahan.gov.in, against your home RTO. We could not confirm from the Puducherry Transport Department's own pages whether the whole thing completes online here or needs a counter visit, and no fee is published either way, so ask your RTO rather than trusting a number from a blog, ours included |
| Bank accounts | Branch visit with the Gazette, affidavit and ID. Each bank sets its own requirement |
| Voter ID | Form 8 for correction of entries |
| Ration Card | Civil Supplies Department or a Common Service Centre. Worth doing early, because the ration card is the residence proof the State Gazette route itself asks for |
| School certificates | Puducherry's Exam Cell consolidates applications and hands them to the Directorate of Government Examinations, Chennai, a duplicate mark sheet, for instance, is obtained from DGE Chennai on payment of Rs 505. But no name-correction procedure is published by the Directorate of School Education, and we could not confirm whether DGE Chennai accepts a Puducherry gazette for it. Ask before you spend |
| Pondicherry University | Its published forms cover migration, equivalence, transcripts and grade reports. There is no name-change form and no published fee. Apply to the Controller of Examinations and ask |
| Birth certificate | Not a gazette job. See the État Civil section, Sections 14 and 15 of the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, through your local Registrar, at municipal fees measured in single rupees |
Keep several printouts of the Gazette page. There is nothing to attest, the published notice is the document.
For a passport, an attested marriage certificate or a joint photo declaration by both spouses is enough, no gazette needed. Aadhaar accepts a marriage certificate too. Take the gazette route when you want the new name to hold everywhere, or when you have used up your Aadhaar name updates.
Harder than it used to be on the Central route. The Department is reported to require a copy of the divorce decree, or an NOC from the husband, before it will notify a return to a maiden surname. That requirement comes to us from press reporting on a departmental notification rather than from a guideline we could read ourselves. The government defended that requirement in the Rajya Sabha in July 2024 and a challenge is before the Delhi High Court. Plan for the decree.
A parent or guardian applies. The Central guidelines say "either father or mother" notifies the change, both parents' signatures are not a Department requirement, whatever other sites list. Central fee Rs 1,700; the minor guideline also insists on the full page of the newspaper, not a clipping.
Most Puducherry cases are transliteration, not name change. A Tamil name romanised two ways across two documents, Sivakumar and Shivakumar, Rajan and Raajan, the ழ that becomes zh, l or r depending on who typed it. Say plainly in the affidavit that it is a spelling correction. A fix on a birth certificate goes to the Registrar under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, not the gazette.
Every one of these is something an official guideline or a counter actually treats as a defect.
| Mistake | Why it hurts |
|---|---|
| Taking a Tamil-language advertisement for the Central Gazette | The guideline says the matter must be in Hindi or English only. A Tamil notice does not satisfy it, however good the paper |
| Buying two advertisements because a website said so | The Central guideline asks for one. The Puducherry state route asks for none at all |
| Turning up at the Government Central Press without a ration card | The published state procedure names an attested ration card as residence proof. It is the item every other guide omits |
| Name spelling that does not match your Aadhaar | The single commonest cause of rejection. The gazette prints exactly what you submit |
| Advertisement placed under a "Change of Name" heading | The Central guideline requires a Public Notice heading and rules the other out by name |
| Losing the original newspaper copies | The Department wants the newspaper in original, and the minor guideline wants the full page |
| Sending un-attested photocopies to the state route | The Directorate's list says attested throughout |
| Believing a "5-day gazette" promise | No such track exists. Two to three weeks for the state gazette, roughly a month for the central one |
| Documents more than one year old | The Central guidelines refuse them, and submitted documents are not returned |
| Paying the Central fee by demand draft or cash | BharatKosh (NTRP) only, since 01/10/2018, and it is non-refundable |
| Trying to "correct" Pondicherry to Puducherry on an old certificate | Not a name discrepancy and not a gazette matter, see the section below |
| Updating only some records after publication | The old name lingers and causes a mismatch at the worst moment |
We prepare the affidavit, publish the newspaper notice, file the Gazette correctly the first time, and guide you on updating Aadhaar, PAN and passport afterwards. Doorstep service, honest pricing.
Every other guide writes "Puducherry" as if it were a single city. It is four non-contiguous districts sitting inside three different states, and that changes exactly one thing in this process, but it is an expensive thing to get wrong.
The gazette part is simple: all four districts use the same Puducherry Gazette. We checked the published Announcements supplements, notices from Karaikal addresses appear in the same weekly Ordinary Gazette as notices from Puducherry town. Karaikal and Mahe also have Government Branch Presses of their own. No branch press is listed for Yanam anywhere on the Directorate's site.
Your gazette is published in Puducherry. Your passport is not re-issued there, unless you live in the right district.
| District | Physically inside | Passport office covering you |
|---|---|---|
| Puducherry | Tamil Nadu | RPO Chennai, Rayala Towers 2 & 3, 4th Floor, 158 Anna Salai, Chennai-600002. There is a Passport Seva Kendra at Puducherry itself |
| Karaikal | Tamil Nadu | RPO Chennai, its RTI disclosure names "the Union Territory of Puducherry (Pudhucherry and Karaikkal districts)" explicitly |
| Mahe | Kerala (Kannur district) | Passport Office Kozhikode, its RTI disclosure names the Mahe region of Puducherry explicitly |
| Yanam | Andhra Pradesh (Konaseema) | RPO Visakhapatnam, its RTI disclosure names "the district of Yanam belonging to union territory Puducherry". Not Vijayawada, whose jurisdiction omits Yanam |
The Puducherry Registration Department runs one District Registrar office and twelve Sub-Registrar offices, and the geography shows up there too: the Sub-Registrar at Mahe sits at Civil Station, Mahe-673310, a Kerala-series PIN, and Yanam is on the 0884 dialling code, which is Andhra Pradesh. Others include Bahour (607402), Villianur (605110), Neravy/T.R. Pattinam (609606), Thirunallar (609607), Karaikal Town, Oulgaret and Thirukannur, with the head office of the Inspector General of Registration on Kamaraj Salai, Sakthi Nagar, Saram, Puducherry.
Puducherry has e-stamping under the Puducherry Stamp (Payment of Duty by means of e-stamp) Rules, 2010, and the Registration Department's own site links to SHCIL for it. Authorised Collection Centres under those Rules include scheduled banks, financial institutions, government undertakings and post offices. The Department's Citizen Charter also carries a warning worth repeating: licensed stamp vendors must sell at face value, and "if any extra demand is made, he is liable for criminal prosecution."
Puducherry is better served here than most states. The Law Department publishes an annual list of notaries for the UT at law.py.gov.in. It is a published PDF list, not a live searchable database, so look for the most recent "List of Notaries in the UT of Puducherry". One thing to avoid: the list circulating from the central Department of Legal Affairs for Puducherry is an interview and selection list from October 2018, not a directory of practising notaries. We publish no notary names or numbers ourselves.
Nowhere else in India does a name-change page need this section. In Puducherry it matters to real families.
The Consulate General of France in Pondicherry, at 2 Marine Street, Puducherry-605001, covers Kerala, Tamil Nadu, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep and all four Puducherry districts. A French national resident in Puducherry does not change their legal name through an Indian gazette at all, that is a French changement de nom, handled through the consulate. If you hold both, you may need both, and the two procedures are entirely separate.
The Karnataka High Court has held that the French Civil Code continues to apply to renonçants, those who opted for French civil status before 1956, and to their descendants, regardless of where they now live. That ruling concerned marriage and divorce. Whether it displaces the ordinary gazette route for a name change specifically is not something we could find decided anywhere, so we are not going to tell you it does or does not. If your family holds French civil status, take advice before assuming the standard route applies to you.
Pondicherry Municipality's birth and death office is still called the Birth & Death Section (État Civil). It holds marriage records from 1880 onwards, conducts civil marriages under the French Code Civil, and issues a livret de famille for Rs 100. Its fees for the thing most people actually need are startlingly small, and worth knowing before an agent quotes you hundreds:
| Service, Pondicherry Municipality | Fee |
|---|---|
| Application for name inclusion in a birth certificate | Rs 1 |
| Name inclusion fee, after one year | Rs 10 |
| Application for correction in a birth or death certificate | Rs 1 |
| Correction fee | Rs 10 |
| Birth certificate (small) | Rs 5 |
| Full extract, birth, death or marriage | Rs 50 |
These are Pondicherry Municipality's published fees. Oulgaret Municipality runs its own registration, and Karaikal, Mahe, Yanam and the communes have their own registrars whose fees we could not verify. The Registrar's office is at Marie Building, No. 1 Dumas Street, Puducherry-605001.
Here is a detail that fits this page perfectly: the territory itself went through an official name change. Pondicherry was officially renamed Puducherry, and both names still appear side by side today, on old documents, institution names, tickets and signboards. People still search for both, which is why you will see both spellings on this page.
What this means for your own name change: if your older documents say Pondicherry and newer ones say Puducherry, that place-name difference does not affect your file. What matters is that your own name is spelled identically across the affidavit, the newspaper advertisement and your ID proof. The territory can use two names; you cannot.
The same errors travel from page to page in this niche. Two of them were on this page until we went back to the government sources. Here is the list, ours included.
| What many websites say | The verified position |
|---|---|
| "Puducherry has no gazette of its own, everything goes to Delhi" | Wrong, and it costs readers about a thousand rupees. Puducherry publishes its own gazette through the Directorate of Stationery and Printing, with a published change-of-name procedure, a fee from Rs 135, and real citizens' notices you can read in the weekly Announcements supplement |
| "The gazette office in Puducherry is at Civil Lines, Delhi-110054" | That is the Central office, and answering a Puducherry query with it is how most of this niche gets it wrong. The Puducherry submission point is the Section Holder, PPC Section, Government Central Press, Thattanchavady, Puducherry-605009, 0413-2252610 |
| "The Puducherry state gazette costs Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,500" | Invented. The Directorate publishes Rs 135 as a minimum for up to 120 words, plus Rs 11 for every 10 words beyond |
| "Rs 250 for each extra alias name" | Wrong, and it was on this page. The Rs 250 is a one-time add-on for adopting a name of another religion without converting, Rs 1,100 + Rs 250 = Rs 1,350. No official schedule contains a per-alias charge |
| "Publish in two newspapers, one English and one Tamil" | Wrong twice over, and it was on this page. The Central guideline asks for one advertisement, and requires the matter to be in Hindi or English only, so the Tamil one does not help. The Puducherry state route asks for no advertisement at all |
| "NRIs pay Rs 7,500 to Rs 9,000" | Rs 3,500 for an adult living abroad and Rs 5,100 for a minor. The bigger numbers are agent pricing dressed as a government fee |
| "The Puducherry gazette takes four to eight weeks" | The Directorate's own words are "within three weeks of submission of request with all the details", and its Citizen Charter says two to three weeks |
| "Pay the gazette fee by demand draft or cash" | For the Central Gazette, BharatKosh (NTRP) online only since 01/10/2018, and the fee is non-refundable |
| "Your printed gazette copy will arrive by post" | Central Gazette printing and hard-copy sale ceased from 1 October 2015. You download the PDF yourself from egazette.gov.in |
| "The fee is just Rs 1,100, nothing more" | Rs 1,100 is the adult rate. A minor is Rs 1,700, abroad is Rs 3,500 and Rs 5,100, and every figure carries a 2016-17 date that the Department itself says varies each financial year |
| "Any old affidavit and newspaper ad will work" | The Department does not accept documents older than one year, and documents once submitted are not returned |
| "Fix your birth certificate spelling through the gazette" | A Registrar matter under Sections 14 and 15 of the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969. In Pondicherry Municipality the application costs Rs 1 and the correction Rs 10 |
| "Puducherry" treated as one city | Four districts in three states. Same gazette; three different passport offices |
We do not publish a stamp-paper denomination for a notarised affidavit in Puducherry, because no government source states one, the Rs 4.50 figure circulating online is the duty on an affidavit presented for registration at a Sub-Registrar office, which is a different thing. We do not publish a street address for the Passport Seva Kendra at Puducherry, because the official RTI disclosure gives none. We do not publish a fee for a driving licence name change, a Pondicherry University name-correction fee, or a school-certificate correction procedure, because none of the three is published anywhere we could reach. And we flag, rather than resolve, the fact that two pages on the Directorate's own website quote different state gazette fees.
From Rs 135 against Rs 1,100, no newspaper advertisement, and two to three weeks instead of a month. For records used only within the UT the local route saves real money. For passport, embassy and all-India needs, go Central, and note that the two Directorate pages quote different state fees, so confirm on 0413-2252610.
The single reason files fail is a spelling gap between the affidavit, the advertisement and the ID proof. The gazette prints exactly what you submit, so pick one exact spelling and use it everywhere.
Not a gazette job. Section 14 of the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969 covers entering a name that was never registered; Section 15 covers correcting an entry, and does it by a note in the margin without altering the original. At Pondicherry Municipality the application costs Rs 1 and the correction Rs 10. Sending it to the gazette wastes a non-refundable fee.
The questions Google actually shows for this search, answered straight.
Make a notarised affidavit stating your old name, new name, father's or husband's name and address. Then choose your gazette. For the Puducherry State Gazette, send a written request to the Director, Stationery and Printing, with the original affidavit, an attested ration card, an attested birth certificate and an attested copy of anything named in the affidavit, to the Section Holder, PPC Section, Government Central Press, Thattanchavady, Puducherry-605009. For the Central Gazette, take one English newspaper advertisement under a Public Notice heading and send the full file to the Department of Publication, Civil Lines, Delhi-110054, with the fee paid on BharatKosh.
No. The UT's e-District portal carries 73 citizen services and a name change is not one of them; neither is any gazette service. The Puducherry gazette application is physical, handed in at the Government Central Press. What is online: the Central Gazette fee on BharatKosh, the download of the published Central notification from egazette.gov.in, and, separately, a driving licence name change through Sarathi.
Rs 1,100 for an adult in India, Rs 1,700 for a minor, Rs 3,500 for an adult living abroad, Rs 5,100 for a minor abroad, Rs 1,400 for a public notice or a name-and-gender change, Rs 1,700 for a change of religion, and Rs 1,700 per case for adoption. Payment on BharatKosh only, and it is non-refundable. Every figure except adoption carries a 2016-17 date and the Department says the amount varies each financial year, confirm with the Department of Publication on 011-23817823 before paying. The Puducherry State Gazette, by comparison, starts at Rs 135.
Less than most people are quoted. In Puducherry the government's own charge can be as low as Rs 135 if you use the State Gazette, which needs no newspaper advertisement at all. The Central Gazette is Rs 1,100 for an adult, plus one advertisement. Everything else, drafting, notarisation, agent charges, is a private cost, not a government fee, and should be quoted to you separately. A firm that gives you one all-in number without breaking out the government portion is hiding something.
It depends which gazette. The Puducherry list is short: original notarised affidavit, attested ration card, attested birth certificate, attested copy of anything named in the affidavit, and a written request. The Central list is longer: the Department's undertaking proforma signed in your old name, the original newspaper, the prescribed proforma in duplicate with two witnesses, a CD with the matter in MS Word, a similarity certificate, two photos, photo ID for you and each witness, address proof, and a request letter with the fee receipt. No Central document may be older than one year.
For most purposes, yes, it is the strongest and most widely accepted documentary proof, and UIDAI, banks and the passport office rely on it. It is not, however, legally compulsory: the passport booklet accepts newspaper clippings or the gazette as alternatives, and after marriage a marriage certificate alone will do. And it is not enough everywhere, a birth certificate correction runs through the Registrar, not the gazette, and some boards and universities apply their own rules on top.
No. A birth record is corrected by the Registrar of Births and Deaths under the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, Section 14 where no name was entered at all, Section 15 where an entry is wrong. Section 15 is precise about the mechanism: the Registrar corrects it "by suitable entry in the margin, without any alteration of the original entry." A gazette notice does not do that, and sending a birth-certificate problem to the gazette wastes a non-refundable fee.
Through your local Registrar. For the Pondicherry Municipality area, the Birth & Death Section (État Civil) publishes its own fees, and they are small: Rs 1 for the application to correct a birth or death certificate and Rs 10 for the correction itself; name inclusion after one year is also Rs 10, and a full extract is Rs 50. The Registrar's office is at Marie Building, No. 1 Dumas Street, Puducherry-605001. Oulgaret Municipality runs its own registration, and Karaikal, Mahe, Yanam and the communes have their own registrars.
Puducherry runs a Birth and Death Information System at bdis.py.gov.in, and registration and certificate services sit there under the Pondicherry Registration of Births and Deaths Rules, 1999, which also set the 21-day window for registering a birth. A correction, though, is a Registrar's decision on evidence, so expect to submit documents to the registering authority rather than complete it entirely on a screen. Start at the municipality or commune that issued the certificate.
Say plainly in the affidavit that it is a spelling correction, not a change of identity, and give both spellings. Most Puducherry cases are exactly this, a Tamil name romanised two ways across two documents. Then match the route to the document: the birth certificate goes to the Registrar; the gazette handles everything that needs a public record. Above all, fix one exact Roman spelling first and use it identically on the affidavit, the advertisement, the ration card and every ID, because the gazette prints exactly what you submit.
For a declaration or affidavit presented for registration at a Sub-Registrar office, the Registration Department publishes stamp duty of Rs 4.50 and a registration fee of Rs 20. That is not the same thing as the non-judicial stamp paper you buy for a notarised affidavit, and no Puducherry government source publishes a denomination for that, so we will not invent one. E-stamping is available under the Puducherry Stamp (e-stamp) Rules, 2010, and the Registration Department's own site links to SHCIL for it. Licensed vendors must sell at face value; overcharging is a criminal offence.
The Directorate of Stationery and Printing, Government Central Press Campus, Industrial Estate, Thattanchavady, Puducherry-605009, 0413-2250482 / 0413-2250478, dsp@py.gov.in. Name-change requests go to the Section Holder, PPC Section, Government Central Press, Thattanchavady (Post), Puducherry-605009, phone 0413-2252610. Branch presses at Kottucherry, Karaikal-609609 and Civil Station, Mahe-673310. There is no Central Gazette office anywhere in Puducherry, that file goes to Delhi by post or courier.
The Directorate's Change of Name Procedure page gives a minimum of Rs 135 for up to 120 words, plus Rs 11 for every 10 words beyond. Its own FAQ page says Rs 60 and Rs 5 per word. Two pages, same government site, neither dated, so take the lower figure as a possibility and the higher as your budget, and confirm on 0413-2252610. Either way it is a fraction of the Central fee, and it needs no newspaper advertisement.
The follow-on searches people run after this one. A few of them are searches for things that do not exist, and it is worth saying so.
Free and public. Go to styandptg.py.gov.in, open the Gazette section, pick your year, then the month, then the category, Ordinary, Extraordinary Part I, Extraordinary Part II or Supplementary, and download the PDF. Citizens' name-change notices sit in the Announcements supplement of the weekly Ordinary Gazette. Older issues are also mirrored on the Internet Archive.
The Government Central Press at Thattanchavady, Puducherry-605009, under the Directorate of Stationery and Printing. Printing there dates back to 1816, with a Tamil section added in 1828, and the gazette still carries its bilingual masthead: The Gazette of Puducherry / La Gazette de L'État de Poudouchéry. Name-change requests go to the PPC Section, 0413-2252610.
0413-2252610 for the PPC Section, which is the counter that actually takes your file. The Directorate's main lines are 0413-2250482 and 0413-2250478, and its email is dsp@py.gov.in. For the Central route the number that matters is the Department of Publication in Delhi, main office 011-23817823 and 011-23819689, with 011-23813761 for the Assistant Controller.
There isn't one. The UT's e-District portal runs 73 services and none of them is a name change or a gazette service. The gazette application is handed in physically at the Government Central Press. Online you can pay the Central fee on BharatKosh, download the published Central notification from egazette.gov.in, and use Sarathi for a driving licence, but not file the gazette name change itself.
Two official documents are worth having. The Directorate's Change of Name Procedure page sets out the four documents, the fee and the three-week turnaround. Its Citizen Charter PDF restates the fee and lists the Karaikal and Mahe branch presses. For the Central route, the Department of Publication publishes its guidelines as PDFs for adults, minors, public notice, religion and adoption. All are free.
Registration and certificate services run through the Birth and Death Information System at bdis.py.gov.in, under the Pondicherry Registration of Births and Deaths Rules, 1999, which also set the 21-day registration window. A correction is the Registrar's decision on evidence, so expect to submit documents to the municipality or commune that issued the certificate. At Pondicherry Municipality the application is Rs 1 and the correction Rs 10.
Same route, same law. An address entry is corrected by the Registrar under Section 15 of the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, by a note in the margin, without altering the original entry, on evidence you supply. It is not a gazette matter, and a gazette notice will not change what the register says.
Departmental gazette notifications are published across the Government of Puducherry's sites, Labour, Animal Husbandry and others carry their own notification pages, while the consolidated gazette itself lives at styandptg.py.gov.in. Your personal name-change notice is a different kind of entry: it appears in the Announcements supplement, not among departmental notifications.
Government Central Press Campus, Industrial Estate, Thattanchavady, Puducherry-605009. Branch presses at Kottucherry, Karaikal-609609 (04368-265414) and Civil Station, Mahe-673310 (0490-2334171). No branch press is listed for Yanam anywhere on the Directorate's site, Yanam residents should contact the Puducherry directorate directly.
Not by keyword. The archive is browsable by year, month and category, and the site's own "Search Gazette" menu item is a dead placeholder that goes nowhere. So when your notice is published, note the date, the issue number and the page, finding it again a year later otherwise means opening PDFs one by one.
Same gazette, same fee, same procedure, we checked the published Announcements and Karaikal addresses appear in the same weekly Ordinary Gazette as Puducherry ones. What differs is afterwards: Mahe's passport office is Kozhikode, Yanam's is Visakhapatnam, and Puducherry and Karaikal fall under RPO Chennai.
Whichever your own documents use. The territory was renamed under the Pondicherry (Alteration of Name) Act, 2006, so older certificates say Pondicherry and newer ones say Puducherry. That is a place-name change, not a discrepancy in your name, and it needs no gazette notification. Write your address in the affidavit exactly as your current address proof shows it.
The Union Territory has four districts in three different corners of India, and we cover all of them.
From Puducherry town and Karaikal on the Tamil coast to Mahe on the Kerala side and Yanam near Andhra Pradesh, the legal steps are identical, because a name change runs on paperwork, not on which enclave you live in. The same file works across the UT and everywhere in India.
Every fee, address, rule and timeline on this page traces to one of these. Where a source contradicts what is commonly published, we followed the source and said so.
Government fees, addresses and timelines change. The Central Gazette schedule still carries a 2016-17 date and the Department says the amount varies each financial year, so confirm before you pay, 011-23817823 for the Central route, 0413-2252610 for the Puducherry route. Last checked against these sources in August 2026.
Match every spelling to your ID, keep original copies, and pick the Central Gazette when your passport, Aadhaar and bank records are involved. Or let us do the full job for you.
