  The photo nuclear reaction cross section of $^{61}$Ni($\gamma$,xp) reaction
have been measured by employing surrogate reaction technique. This indirect
method is used for the first time to obtain the cross section of photo nuclear
reaction. The compound nucleus $^{61}$Ni$^{*}$ was populated using the transfer
reaction $^{59}$Co($^{6}$Li,$\alpha$) at E$_{lab}=$ 40.5 MeV. To calculate the
surrogate ratio, $^{60}$Ni($\gamma$,xp) was selected as reference reaction and
the corresponding compound nucleus $^{60}$Ni$^{*}$ was populated using the
transfer reaction $^{56}$Fe($^{6}$Li,d) at E$_{lab}=$ 35.9 MeV. The
experimental cross section data of the reference reaction has been taken from
EXFOR data libraries. Compound nuclear cross section calculations have been
done using EMPIRE 3.2.3 code.
