Amid Covid, it’s hard to travel across countries. Like others, Indian government has also restricted visa entry. It has decided to allow travelling to people where they want, given that they have met these requirements:

Requirements for eVisa

As the rules by the Ministry of External Affairs have been revised, you need every document to be submitted for attestation/ apostille. For this, you need to have scanned copies of all documents before submission. These documents can be original or supporting.

One should know that the scanning fee is applicable to all the original documents. So, you need to pay for each and every page being submitted for the MEA attestation/ Apostille.

Prior Attestations

The applicants who need to enclose degrees or certificates from the government and private approved varsities, they have to attest them from HRD plus MEA prior to submission to the embassy or consulate.

The documents should have both, would be-husband and would-be wife passport copies, for submission. They should also enclose a letter of bachelorhood, which is called a single status affidavit in India.

If you are married, you need to submit the passport copies of both, husband and wife, together with the marriage certificate for attestation.

If you fail to provide a bachelorhood certificate (if you’re single), or a marriage certificate (if you’re married), the embassy will reject your application for attestation.

Attestation Requirements By Embassy

Documents	Requirements	Processing Time
Personal Documents	MEA Attestation Original Certificate	3-5 Working Days
Education Documents	MEA Attestation Original Degree/ Certificates	3-5 Working Days
Company Invoice	MEA Attested Original Invoice	3-5 Working Days
Commercial Documents	MEA Attested Original Document	3-5 Working Days
Personal/ Educational –SDM+MEA+Embassy	Original Documents	10-12 Working Days
Commercial Documents-Chamber of Commerce+ MEA+ Embassy	Original Documents	7-9   Working Days

Fee
The fee depends on the outsourcing agencies, which have been fixed by the government to carry out application collection from visa seekers. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) does not accept documents directly from the applicants.

All documents brought for the purpose of apostille or attestations are to be submitted and collected from the four designated outsourcing agencies. But, the fee is chargeable per document. These charges are for its collection and delivery for apostille or normal attestation.

Being payable, the apostille of document requires you to pay INR 50. For collection and delivery, the applicant has to pay INR 90 per document (as service fee) and INR 3 (per page scanning fee). All packages are inclusive of Embassy fees and applicable taxes. Embassy Fee is exclusive of taxes.

The outsourcers provide pickup service where your document needs document collection from your preferred location, processed and delivered to your address. If you may refer to the logistic package with pickup and delivery, it may cost around INR 1100/-.

The applicant can raise a query if one has grievances. Here is the address and contact details.

Attestation Section/Apostille Cell
Ministry of External Affairs
Jawahar Lal Nehru Bhawan, Janapath Marg,
New Delhi-110011.
Telephone : 011-49018403011-49018403 (Attestation)
49018404 (Apostille)
CPV Division
Ministry of External Affairs
Patiala House Annexe,
Tilak Marg
New Delhi -110001
Tel No. 011-23387104011-23387104
Fax: 011-23782821
Email: osdcpvrr@mea.gov.in

SMS Benefits

If you want updates on the key attestation services, you can enroll for SMS services with the outsourcer you picked up. This enrollment can help you to get automated messages on the registered number so that you won’t skip any important update about the attestation process. If you have sent any document, you can tap the status of your application. The language of this text service is English.