If you are still worried about how to verify your police clearance or birth certificate, keep them all aside. You can easily do this and get off all hurdles that cap put your foreign trip or visit on halt.

Here, we are going to share everything about how to get your certificates apostilled in India. Let’s get started with a short brief about it.

Apostille

It is a prominent authority that can sign all papers that you need to get attested for immigration. You can take it as an attestation service. It is available in the Hague Convention countries only. Nobody knew about it before 1961, as it was not convened. When multiple times authentication of visa, passport, birth certificate, transcripts or other immigration papers looked difficult to carry on, the intellects from various countries had set its foundation on 25^th October, 1980. As of now, 101 countries are its member.

The greatness of this service lies in its global acceptance. The legalisation conducted by one member country is accepted by another one, which is a part of this convention.

What kind of certificates does it legalise?

It mainly verifies personal documents, which can be a birth certificate, death certificate, marriage certificate, educational degree or mark sheet etc..

You cannot give duplicates of the aforesaid papers to go abroad for any reason. It is put on the originals. Besides, you should enclose the first and the last page copy of your passport.

One thing that you should always keep into account is that the Ministry of External Affairs has designated a few agencies with this task, which acts as an NRI consultant to get you through the typicality of this process. You should be extra careful from the fraudulent, which makes you a fool by taking money, but does not do anything. So, always ask about their experience and check their authenticity through their ratings on Google Maps & feedbacks, at least. Or, you can counter them with questions about how they do and who have considered them before.

Who does apostille certificate?

The designated signatory can be any of these Class I Gazetted Officers:

• Director
• Magistrate
• Deputy Director
• Section Officer
• Commissioner
• Chief Secretary
• Joint Secretary
• Assistant Secretary
• Deputy Commissioner
• Resident Commissioner
• Sub Divisional Magistrate

Do you need to go for any other attestation before?

Yes, you may need to get your papers stamped from the state’s HRD. It would verify and check if all your papers for immigration are original. Thereafter, you should go to the notary public with the same request.

As I said, you ‘MAY’ need to go there, it is not compulsory. You can skip going there and catch up with an experienced NRI consultant to directly legalise your papers from the MEA.

About Fee

The verification from the state HRD or the MEA, both, is a paid service. However, both ministries charge minimally, which means you need to pay a nominal fee for it.

Timeline

Since it is about examining your documents if they are not fake, the competent authorities sluggishly do this. The reason might be that the ministries go deep with examination of their legality, which can be time taking.

All in all, the state government may take one or two working days. But, the MEA’s processing could be long. It may complete the whole processing in 3 to 4 weeks.