Form 60/61
Also written Form 60
The declaration an investor without a PAN must submit for a transaction that would otherwise require one, giving details of the transaction in place of the PAN itself.
In plain language
A PAN is required for most financial transactions in India. But not everyone has one at the moment a transaction needs to happen.
For that gap, the rules allow a Form 60/61 declaration instead. It sets out the details of the transaction and a declaration that the person does not have a PAN. It is a stand-in, not a permanent alternative — the investor is still expected to apply for a PAN separately.
How it works
Where quoting the PAN is mandatory under Section 114B of the Income Tax Rules and the investor does not have one, a Form 60/61 declaration giving details of the transaction has to be provided in its place, so the transaction can still go through.
The same declaration reappears in the risk-based KYC framework: for the medium and high-risk investor categories, either the PAN card or a Form 60/61 declaration is made mandatory, alongside stricter identity, address and source-of-funds checks for those categories.
A worked example
A daily-wage worker wants to open a small recurring deposit but has never applied for a PAN. Because the PAN is otherwise required for this transaction, the bank instead takes a Form 60/61 declaration from her, recording the transaction details and her confirmation that she has no PAN.
Had she instead fallen into the bank's medium or high-risk KYC category — say, because of the size or pattern of her transactions — the same Form 60/61, or the PAN itself, would have been mandatory rather than optional, with additional checks on the source of her funds on top of it.
Why NISM asks about it
Chapter 17 (Operational Aspects of Investment Management), sections 17.2.1 and 17.5, both use Form 60/61 — first as the stand-in where a PAN is required but unavailable, then again inside the risk-based KYC categories for medium and high-risk investors. Expect a question on when Form 60/61 is used instead of a PAN.
Common exam traps
- Form 60/61 does not exempt anyone from needing a PAN eventually — it is a temporary declaration for a transaction where the PAN is otherwise required but not yet available.
- For the high-risk category, the workbook additionally requires the source of funds to be established — Form 60/61 alone is not enough at that risk level.
- Do not confuse this with Form 49A, which is the application for the PAN itself, not a substitute for not having one.
Where this is taught
Free preparation for NISM Series X-ARelated terms
- Know Your CustomerThe identity and address check every investor must clear before a bank, broker or depository participant will open an account — mandatory under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.
- Form 49AThe Income Tax form used to apply for a Permanent Account Number, submitted with proof of identity and proof of address, the entry point to every PAN-linked financial transaction.
- Micro investmentMutual fund investments up to Rs 50,000 in aggregate under all schemes of a fund house, which an individual investor may make without a PAN — but never without KYC.