Apostillation from MEA India
Apostillation is a way of legalizing the personal, official and legal documents for other countries.
The only way you came to know about the apostillation is by Consulate or by your friend. It’s not common for everyone to know about it, I will tell you it’s not notarization.
Well it’s kind of notarization but not exactly.Notarization is legalizing your photocopies of any document to submit the photocopy for official use within India.
Consider a situation in which you are travelling to some other country (of course you are travelling). And they are asking for apostillation.
Why would they ask for apostillation?
What is apostillation?
The foreign country asks for apostillation only to be sure that whatever the documents that you are submitting is an original legal document, and fraud or forged documents are submitted to them.
Go to Apostille Process Directly
What is apostillation ?
Apostillation is a 10cm *10 cm sticker given by MEA (ministry of external affairs ).
It is given only to original documents, issued in India.
Personal documents – Marriage certificate, Birth certificate, PCC .. Etc
Educational documents – degree certificate, transcripts
Commercial documents – registered company documents
Legal documents – contracts, affidavits
These documents and other thousands of documents can be apostrilled.
What all documents are required for apostillation
There are only two main documents – Original document and supporting documents.
Original document – The document given by the concerned authority, If it’s an online issued document then only PDF is fine.
Supporting documents – Documents such as passports and aadhar card will serve as supporting document. These documents are required only for name and detail verification.
Can we directly get apostillation ?
Unfortunately No
Before 2012 citizens could directly get apostille from MEA but since 2012 the documents submitted to mea sky rocketed, MEA could not handle the collection and distribution directly.
So from 2012 MEA has outsourced collection and distribution of document for apostille.
However only MEA has the right to do apostille for all your documents.
What are the types of apostillation?
There is only one apostille that is only provided by MEA, but there are types of authentication.
Authentication is a step performed before apostillation.
In the authentication there are 2 types
- State authentication done by state government (Slow process)
- SDM authentication done by sub divisional magistrate (Faster process)
When to use state and SDM authentication?
This depends on the country you are travelling to and the state in which the document was issued.
If your travelling country is in the hague nation list you can get SDM authentication except Austria and Italy. If the travelling country is not there in Hague nation list then you should get state authentication.
If your document is from Punjab, Haryana, or Goa you must get state authentication regardless of hague nation or not.
How much time is required for authentication?
State authentication
It is a slower process since lot of government departments are involved this will take 30 working days to complete the whole process.
Yep I know that’s a lot of days.
SDM authentication
It’s faster process the total time required for apostillation through this varies 3 days to 14 working days depending on the package you choose.
How do I start for apostillation?
You can start by registering here and following the steps that are mentioned.
It takes hardly 5 minutes to apply for apostille
Following are the details an Apostille contains:
- Name of country from which the document was issued.
- Name of the Person to whom document is issued.
- Name of person signing the document.
- Designation of the singed person.
- Place of certification date of certification.
- Number of certificate.
- Seal or stamp of authority issuing certificate.
- Signature of authority issuing certificate.