MEA apostille
Everything that yo need to know about getting MEA apostille.
So you are looking for Mea apostille for documents you are in a right place read on for information, at the end of this 10 min reading you will know be knowing the following things
Skip to the sections below if you already know the following details.
need personalized counselling?? chat with us in chat panel on right side
what is Mea apostille and why it is required!!
Consider a scenario – you are travelling from India to some other country (of course you are travelling) and you have some documents which are issued in India, document such as a Birth certificate, marriage certificate, company issued certificate etc.. etc.. you want to use these documents in other country, in order to make sure that these are legal document and are issued from a registered organization the other country will ask you to get MEA apostille from your country.
To make the documents issued in one country legal in other countries and to make the whole process easier 103 countries got together and formed convention called Hague nation convention where government of one country will legalize its documents to other countries so that it can be used in other country without any issues.The sticker provided by MEA is called apostille.
This makes a lot of things easier for you.
Go to Apostille Process Directly
types of apostille
In simple words there are two types of apostille
- More time consuming one (state attestation)
- Less time consuming one (SDM attestation )
More time consuming apostille (State attestation)
All the documents that are issued will belong to some or the other state, these need to be authenticated by the state government.Documents will be authenticated by secreteriarate of that region. This clarifies MEA that this is a genuine document and it is issued by the concerned authority.
For example birth certificate attestation-
You need to visit secreteriarate of your region and submit your documents in turn they will send your document to registrar of births and deaths from them it will be confirmed that this is a legal document, and the document will be returned back to secreteriarate, finally secreteriarate will put a seal stating MEA that this is legal and issued from this region and this state.
After getting the state attestation this document needs to be sent to MEA for final apostille. This is where we enter the picture, Since 2012 government of India (MEA) has outsourced this collection and distribution of documents to us since there were thousands of documents which the government couldn’t keep up with. This MEA apostille procedure we will handle.MEA will not accept direct submission of documents by citizens.
This whole process will take 30 working days since lot of government bodies are involved.
Less time consuming (SDM Attestation)
In this kind of apostille all you need to do is submit the documents to us we will take care of everything.
We will take your documents and submit the documents to SDM( Sub divisional Magistrate)
SDM is like state authentication but it will take less time
After this we will send the document to Ministry of external affairs.
Validity of MEA apostille?
apostille either State or SDM will be valid for 6 months. If the apostille is beyond 6 months it needs to be re apostilled.
Which kind of apostille is good for you?
Check whether your destination country is in the hague nation list (except Italy and Austria ) then SDM is fine for you.
Panjab , Haryana and Goa issued Documents or you want MEA apostille for countries other than hague nations you need state attestation.
Documents required to get MEA apostille ?
–>Original document that you want to apostille
–> Passport photocopies of the person whose name is mentioned in the document
If an affidavit mentions 10 names we need all 10 people passport photocopies.
That’s it you are on your way to get 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.