The Government Central Press & Government Book Depot at Mumbai is the main Maharashtra Gazette Office is the Government Central Press & Government Book Depot in Mumbai. They are located in other major cities to distribute the gazettes.

Detail — Information

Name — Government Central Press & Government Book Depot

Address — Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Road, Ground Floor, Beside Maharashtra State Jawahar Bal Bhavan, Near Charni Road Station, Charni Road West, Girgaon, Mumbai, 400004

Phone — 022-23632693 / 022-23630695

Hours — Monday–Friday, 10:00 AM–5:30 PM

→ For the full online application walkthrough, see our Maharashtra Gazette application guide.

No. The entire name change application can be completed through the Maharashtra e-Gazette Portal online. So, a physical visit to the office may only be required where a notification has already been published and certified physical copies of that notification is requested; or where physical assistance is required.

You can obtain certified copies two ways:

Online — access the digital archive through the official portal and download your digitally signed PDF

Physical copies — contact the State Directorate of Government Printing and Stationery directly, providing your application reference number

There are three primary steps: make a notarized affidavit, put up announcements in newspapers and submit your application to the Directorate of Government Printing, Stationery and Publications. The typical time for processing is 30-45 days end-to-end.

→ Full step-by-step walkthrough with document checklist: Maharashtra Gazette application guide.

The base state government fee ranges from ₹523–₹569 for the Open Category and reduced fee of ~₹272 for the Backward Category. When you go through the Central Government Gazette rather than the state process, the total costs are ₹1,100–₹1,500.

Note: These figures are broadly consistent with the confirmed DGPS fee (₹559 general / ₹309 reserved) covered in our detailed fee breakdown — minor variation likely reflects different points in time or category. Always verify current fees on the live portal.

The choice depends on your career and documentation needs:

Central Gazette — choose for national validity (passports, central government jobs, immigration)

Maharashtra State Gazette — sufficient for local or state-level use

Both — if you require universal clearance across all institution types

No. You cannot officially buy an "instant" or same-day Gazette notification in India. Normal processing takes 3-6 weeks. No additional delays will be incurred unless the error-free files are submitted the first time through the e-Gazette portal.

Choose one master document, usually your Passport or school certificates as the baseline, then update Aadhaar first, followed by PAN and Passport alignment. When each patch introduces a new mismatch then they need to be worked from a single consistent baseline to eliminate them.

Yes, list all errors and correct names in one master affidavit, publish a single public notice covering all corrections in two newspapers, and submit one consolidated application to the Department of Publication. This is more efficient than submitting separate applications for individual errors.

Name inconsistencies cause major delays, identity verification failures, and outright rejections during the loan application process and during employment onboarding. They keep automated systems from matching your background records, tax files and credit history, making it strongly advisable to make sure there are no mismatches before you apply for major financial products or jobs.

A name mismatch on educational certificates can lead to verification rejections, visa delays, and employment hurdles. Primary solutions:

✅ Create a one-name affidavit linking both name versions

✅ Publish a Gazette notification for a permanent legal fix

✅ Request a certificate correction directly from the issuing board (where boards allow it)

Follow this sequence: notarized affidavit → newspaper notices → official gazette notification, and then update your primary core ID (PAN/Aadhaar) first, and then do financial accounts and secondary IDs.

Apply online through the Maharashtra Police PCS Portal, complete local police station verification, and collect the final document within 30–45 working days. Note: a PCC serves a different purpose than a Gazette notification — to confirm criminal record status for employment or visas.

Standard passport police verification typically takes 7–21 days.

Typical timeline:

File forwarded to your local police station within 3–4 days of your PSK appointment

An officer contacts you for in-person document and address verification

Once local police submit a "Clear" report to the Regional Passport Office, your passport is dispatched within 3–5 working days

Under Tatkal scheme: Passport is normally printed and sent within 1-3 days and the police verification is done after the passport is printed, not prior to printing.

No — ordinary individual criminal case dismissals are not published or notified through a government Gazette notification in India. Dismissals are judicial orders managed by the courts and are considered criminal dismissals. A Gazette notification is only published for public acts, government employment matters or official legislative rules — not private criminal acquittals.

Download or collect your official copy, then update your identity documents and notify key institutions.

Key steps:

Obtain the printed or digital copy

Update essential IDs — PAN and Aadhaar first

Update financial and employment records

No — the entire procedure is straightforward and can be completed independently through the official Maharashtra e-Gazette portal by submitting basic personal documents.

Applications most frequently fail due to:

❌ Data mismatches across documents

❌ Faulty or outdated affidavits

❌ Incorrect newspaper advertisements

Look for three indicators: an active Mahaonline/Aaple Sarkar registration badge will be hung at the entry, statutory fee tariffs posted openly on a wall chart, and instant government logo e-receipt should be printed at the time of payment. Such shops are third parties, not official offices and are not independent commercial legal shops.

Can an auxiliary facilitation counter itself approve or publish my notification? No, these private agencies are given logon access to the same public portal you could have, but have no administrative control. Be careful with notarized affidavits that are not verified by the counters – they could be the basis for identity theft. Do only from Aaple Sarkar Seva Kendras / CSC Centers (government-franchised) or official portal only.

Can a neighborhood notary act as a full-service Gazette office? No. It is not the responsibility of a Notary to write the Affidavit. This is the exclusive responsibility of the Directorate of Government Printing, Stationery and Publications (DGPS). DGPS branches are available in Mumbai (Charni Road), Pune (Government Photozinco Press), Nagpur (Government Press and Book Depot) and Aurangabad (Government Gazette Department).

Can a district court process my Gazette file? No, a court is not an administrative body. The court complex is required only for buying stamp paper and executing your affidavit before a notary in the actual filing of the Gazette application.

Crowdsourced maps (Google Maps pins, wikis, forums) frequently point to outdated, relocated, or closed facilities, and scammers sometimes post fake pins with private numbers to pretend to be government employees. The same applies to Forums, which frequently mistake a Government Printing Press for a District Magistrate's office or notary block altogether.

Instead: Check addresses on official .gov.in or .nic.in domains, and download the official PDF directory from the state printing department.

Government counters are legally restricted from handling physical cash. Pay digitally instead:

Central Gazette: via Bharatkosh (UPI, net banking, cards)

Maharashtra State Gazette (DGPS): via the portal's internal secure payment gateway

No digital banking access? Go to the CSC/Maha e-Seva Kendra, where cash is changed to digital payments and a stamped receipt is provided — or pay a Demand Draft to the "Controller of Publications" for Central applications.

Direct your query to the Gazette Notification Section, also called the Change of Name Section or Private Notices Department.

Maharashtra DGPS (State): ask for the "Part-II Private Notices Desk" (खाजगी जाहिराती विभाग)

Central Department of Publication: ask for the "Gazette Section" or "Non-Statutory Compilation Desk"

Inside the building, go to the Enquiry/Reception counter, then the Cash/Challan Verification Desk, then the Scrutiny & Document Submission Desk.

No. The Charni Road compound is only a state-level headquarters and issues only Maharashtra State Gazette. There is no integration with the Central Government Gazette.

The only Central Government presence in Mumbai is a Sale Counter for Printed Government Books at the New CGO Building (New Marine Lines) that does not accept any Name Change files.

To submit a Central application, you must either:

Mail your dossier to Department of Publication, Civil Lines, Behind Old Secretariat, Delhi – 110054

Hand-deliver it in person (Mon–Fri, 10 AM–1 PM and 2 PM–4 PM)

Use this general structure:

To,

The Director / Joint Director,

[Printing & Publications Department Name],

[Government Press Compound Name],

[Street Address, Area, Landmark],

[City], [State] – [Pin Code]

For Maharashtra (DGPS Mumbai):

To,

The Directorate of Government Printing, Stationery and Publications (DGPS),

Government Central Press,

Netaji Subhash Road, Charni Road (East),

Mumbai, Maharashtra – 400004

Write your purpose in bold capitals on the envelope (e.g., "APPLICATION FOR CHANGE OF NAME GAZETTE"), and include your name, address, and contact details on the back for deficiency follow-ups.

The receiving office cannot forward or process your files, It will be lost within their own division. This is because the state and central have their own networks..

If Central documents were sent to a State office (or vice versa): assume that the physical documents are lost. Make a new affidavit and newspaper ads and re-ship to the correct address. The online Bharatkosh payment remains valid until a new receipt copy is printed.

To avoid this entirely: Do not send a paper portfolio. You can use the 100% digital state portfolios.

No. There are no public reception desks or cash counters at no mail-only facilities and security will refuse entry. Alternately use India Post Speed Post (traceable) or use State portal (no physical address required).

Office — Public Submission Hours

Central Gazette (Delhi) — Mon–Fri, 10 AM–1 PM (counters lock 2 PM–4 PM for internal processing)

Maharashtra (Charni Road, Mumbai) — Physical helpdesk Mon–Fri, 10 AM–2 PM — though submissions are fully online

Arriving even five minutes late means no drop-off. Before joining a queue, make sure your receipt is printed, newspaper pages are complete, and original.

No. Official hours don't structurally change. They might be affected by severe flooding or staff absence. In the event of an in-person visit, pack documents in a waterproof ziplock folder, as signatures and newspaper pages can be ruined by rain. During monsoon 3-7 days will be added to Speed Post delivery to cover mail.

No — online payment doesn't grant after-hours physical access. In the case of Treasury systems such as Bharatkosh, they are not associated with local security desks and won't verify transaction status and allow you to enter after the clock has struck midnight. Come back at the next public window opportunity or mail your dossier via Registered Post/Speed Post. This helps you to entirely bypass counters.

No — DGPS Maharashtra operates 100% online with no physical walk-in counter for any age group. Senior citizens can instead:

Use a Maha e-Seva Kendra (CSC) in their neighborhood, where an operator handles form-filling, scanning, and payment

Use Aadhaar e-KYC to auto-fill profile data via OTP

Have a trusted relative file on their behalf through a proxy account submission, provided documents match the applicant's identity

For grievances: call the Gazette Office Helpline at 022-61316404 or use the portal's "Grievance" tab.

No — there's no on-site desk that can correct typos once a notification is approved or published. The fix depends on who made the error:

Government error (portal staff mistyped correct data): visit the Charni Road helpdesk with your ARN, the printed page showing the typo, and your original documents. The department issues a free Corrigendum Notification in a future issue.

Your error (typo in your own submission): no manual correction is possible — you must file a completely fresh application, paying the fee again.

Avoid third-party "on-site agents" claiming they can fix typos for cash — manually altering the cryptographically signed PDF invalidates it entirely.

It depends on jurisdiction, and neither offers true same-day service:

State Gazette (Maharashtra): As part of the portal process, when buying tickets, select Tatkal/Urgent Processing at checkout for the additional fee of approximately ₹1,000 fee which will reduce the review period to approximately 10–15 days (not a walk-in service).

Central Gazette (Pan-India): No official online tatkal tier exists. There is no official tier online. The quickest way is to personally deliver your dossier to the Delhi head office during the public hours – this does not shorten the processing time, but just eliminates postal delays.

Yes — for several specific reasons:

Apparent intent to evade financial or legal liabilities

Using royal/official titles (e.g., "Major," "Maharaja," "President")

Offensive, abusive, or banned words

Single-letter or floating-initial surnames (must be a complete word)

Intent to impersonate or fraudulently claim relation to a public figure

To get approved: Make sure character-for-character spelling consistency in the portal entry, the affidavit and both your newspaper ads, and be sure to include "adopting the name of the foster parent by consent" in your affidavit.

No — nicknames and aliases are strictly rejected, the Gazette has one absolute legal name. You might have a data mismatch as your ID may be named "Suresh Kumar" while the affidavit is named "Suresh (Bittu) Kumar".

To formally adopt a nickname as your legal name: use it as such formally — on your affidavit say "I have changed my name from [Old Legal Name] to [New Name]" and use that spelling character by character throughout your papers.

No — and you should avoid mentioning it at all. The government only looks at your newspaper notice for your personal identifiers (old name, new name, parent/spouse name, address and affidavit information) ; the location of the office where you put your notice is not considered legal. Extraneous text will drive up advertising expenses and increase the risk of typography errors in other positions.

Keep your ad text strictly to: "I, [Old Full Name], residing at [Address], have changed my name to [New Full Name] vide an affidavit sworn before Notary [Name] dated [Date]."

Yes, but rules differ by jurisdiction:

Central Gazette (Delhi): accepts application forms in all states of India. NRIs living outside of India are also eligible to apply and need to have a permanent Indian reference address and need to get their affidavit signed by an Indian Embassy or Consulate in their home country.

State Gazettes (e.g., Maharashtra DGPS): It should be very specific. Your current address must be within that state. Application to Maharashtra will be rejected and redirected to the Gujarat Government Press or Central Gazette by a resident of Gujarat state.

Yes — religion changes follow the same Gazette framework as name changes, but require additional documentation:

A Conversion Certificate from the religious authority/trust, or a Deeksha/Baptism/Shahada Certificate

Your affidavit must state: "I have converted my religion from [Old Religion] to [New Religion] out of my own free will... Consequent to this conversion, I have adopted the new name [New Name]"

Your newspaper ad must explicitly declare the conversion

Select "Change of Religion" under "Reason for Change" if you are moving locally, or if you need to move to another country or work for the central government, use the Central Gazette.

The DGPS portal routes applications to the correct local verification authority and balances processing workload:

Urban queue: routed to Municipal Corporations (BMC, PMC); verified against property tax receipts and electricity bills

Rural queue: routed through Zilla Parishad/Gram Panchayat networks; verified against 7/12 extracts or village assessment records

Selecting the wrong region (e.g., a rural Taluka for an urban address) causes a mismatch flag and application reversion.

Check for an automated confirmation, then run a live status check:

Download your Application Acknowledgment Receipt (or Bharatkosh electronic receipt) immediately after payment

Check SMS/email for a confirmation message with your application ID

Log into the portal, go to "Track Your Application," and enter your ARN — status reading "Submitted," "Pending," or "Under Scrutiny" confirms your file is logged

If your dashboard shows "No Records Found" after 48 hours despite payment: don't resubmit — file a ticket via the portal's "Grievance" tab with your bank transaction reference ID instead.

The Maharashtra portal runs automated validation scripts that reject files failing these exact parameters:

Affidavit & Stamp Paper:

Minimum ₹100 Non-Judicial Stamp Paper (or e-SBTR) — lower denominations cause immediate rejection

The stamp paper's "Purchaser" field must bear your old legal name

Notary scan must clearly show a legible seal, handwritten signature, and Notary Registration Serial Number

Digital Photo (Automated Validation):

Pixel dimensions: 160px (width) × 200–212px (height) exactly

File format: .JPG/.JPEG only

File size: strictly between 5 KB and 20 KB

Background: plain white or light solid color — busy backgrounds or shadows trigger rejection

Head coverings: hats/caps/sunglasses banned; religious headwear (hijab, turban) permitted only if the full face from chin to forehead remains visible

Special scenario document triggers:

Married women (surname change): Marriage Certificate or signed Deed Poll/Marriage Declaration

Divorced women reverting to maiden name: certified Divorce Decree required

Minors: parent/guardian is the primary applicant, with the child's Birth Certificate attached

The Aaple Sarkar Portal redirects to the Government Receipt Accounting System (GRAS/Mahakosh), and sometimes it becomes glitching because of the synchronization issue between the servers of a bank.

Common failures:

"Bank CIN Missing": This error occurs when you have successfully made a bank withdrawal, but the bank server failed to send the Challan Identification Number to GRAS and your session expired.

Session expiry loop: It arises when a UPI request or OTP is not approved within 3-5 minutes, after which the treasury token expires.

Double-deduction errors: If the user clicks back/refresh during redirection, the money may be deducted twice, but with a generic error message.

How to fix it — don't pay again:

Locate your GRN Number (starts with MH00...) from browser history or email receipts

Go to the official GRAS Search Challan Portal

Enter your GRN (or Bank CIN/PRN) and complete the captcha

If a "Verify" button appears, click it — this forces GRAS to re-sync with your bank's API and correct the status to "SUCCESS"

A valid e-Challan receipt should read "PAID" or "SUCCESS" with Major Head Code "0058 - Stationery and Printing."

You cannot edit a published Gazette entry directly. The fix depends on fault:

If it was a printing error (government's fault):

Draft a formal rectification letter to the Director, DGPS, citing your Application ID, Gazette Volume/Issue Number, and Serial Entry Number

Include a comparison table: incorrectly published text vs. correct spelling

Attach your original submission form, payment receipt, the corrupted page, and your notarized affidavit

Submit in person or via Speed Post to Charni Road, Mumbai

Output: a free Corrigendum (शुद्धिपत्रक) will be published in an upcoming issue referencing and correcting your original entry.

If it was your own data-entry error:

Execute a fresh affidavit stating you're correcting a typo from your previous application

Submit an entirely new application on Aaple Sarkar

Repay the full government fee — no discount for correction filings

Critical warning: If the misspelled Gazette page is submitted to any passport office or bank, the system will detect the difference in characters with your Aadhaar/PAN and may lead to an "Adverse Match Hold." A Corrigendum normally takes between 15–30 days as it has to be manually adjusted in the back office ledger.

No. The Charni Road compound is strictly a state-level headquarters processing only the Maharashtra State Gazette, with no integration with the Central Government Gazette. Central applications must be mailed or hand-delivered to Civil Lines, Delhi.

Look for an active Mahaonline/Aaple Sarkar registration badge, statutory fee tariffs posted openly, and an instant government-logo e-receipt at payment. Shops without these are unauthorized third-party facilitators with no administrative authority.

Yes, for reasons including apparent intent to evade liabilities, using royal or official titles, offensive words, single-letter surnames, or impersonating a public figure. State clearly in your affidavit that the adoption is free and not deceptive.

160 x 200-212 pixels, JPG/JPEG format, file size strictly between 5KB and 20KB, plain white or light background, straight front-facing pose with no hats or sunglasses. Religious headwear is allowed if the full face remains visible.

If it was a government printing error, request a free Corrigendum by writing to the Director, DGPS with your Application ID and supporting documents. If it was your own data-entry error, you must file a completely fresh application and repay the fee.

No, State Gazette applications are strictly localized to residents of that state. An application from a Gujarat resident filed through Maharashtra DGPS will be rejected and redirected to the Gujarat Government Press or Central Gazette.

The Government Central Press & Government Book Depot is located at Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Road, Near Charni Road Station, Girgaon, Mumbai 400004. Contact: 022-23632693 or 022-23630695, open Monday-Friday 10:00 AM-5:30 PM.

No, the entire application can be completed through the Maharashtra e-Gazette Portal online. Visiting in person is only necessary for certified physical copies of an already-published notification.

Choose one master document, usually your Passport or school certificates, as the baseline. Update Aadhaar first, then align PAN and Passport to match that baseline.

No, ordinary individual criminal case dismissals are not published through a government Gazette notification. Criminal dismissals are judicial orders managed by courts. Gazette notifications cover public acts and government employment matters, not private criminal acquittals.

Standard police verification takes 7-21 days. Your file is forwarded to the local police station within 3-4 days, followed by in-person verification, and passport dispatch within 3-5 days after a Clear report. Tatkal applications dispatch in 1-3 days with verification happening afterward.

Yes. List all errors and correct names in one master affidavit, publish a single consolidated public notice in two newspapers, and submit one application to the Department of Publication covering all corrections.

Apply online through the Maharashtra Police PCS Portal, complete local police station verification, and collect the certificate within 30-45 working days. This is separate from a Gazette notification and verifies criminal record status, not identity change.