Tuesday, 15 October 2019

MEA Apostille

MEA Apostille
You might have heard of the term called apostille while you were seeking a visa for planning for your long term stay, it could be for employment, higher education, temporary or permanent residency. Or perhaps, you are planning your business growth opportunities in a foreign country. The document legalization is a mandatory procedure to be followed for such cases. Certificate Apostille or document apostille are terms that simply mean the legalization of your documents and certificates. Although, it has a characteristic that there are several stages of verification & validation before final legalization by the central government. In this guide, you will know everything about the apostille process,  to get it done in India.

What is Apostille Attestation?
Apostille attestation is a way of attesting the required certificates so that they can be made admissible in a concerned country that belongs to the Hague Convention. Document apostille is an attestation of the global level that is legally acceptable in more than 119 countries, most of the European and American countries accept the format. In India, the MEA Apostille sticker from the Ministry of External Affairs stuck on the back of the document, & again a stamp is provided on the sticker in a way that it is partially on the sticker & partially on the document.
mea-apostille

Apostille in India
The trade, areas of employment opportunities, education, everything spontaneously keeps advancing & with time, the number of citizens going abroad has to increase as well. This brings in the necessity for the issuance of the student visa, employment visa, resident visa or the requirement of certificate attestation for making business in a foreign country.
Apostille in India has aided in the above procedure. India has been a member of the Hague Convention since 2005 & is now recognized in almost all the Hague countries. The Ministry of External Affairs i.e, MEA is the central government department that provides a sticker on the documents that contains the details of the applicant which include the name, document name, name of the officer who issued the sticker & stamp and the date of issuance. In India, the validity of the Apostille sticker is 6 months. The procedure is an indirect course of action that involves attestation readily from the regional & the state government before approaching to the Ministry of External Affairs.

Steps involved in Document Apostille Process:

Notary Attestation :
The first step in the authentication of the educational & personal documents is getting them certified from the Notary. It’s done at the regional level from a lawyer or at the collector’s office.
Home Department Attestation:
Home Department is a state-level organization that certifies the personal documents. It is responsible for the legalization of the documents which are issued under the state government.

HRD Attestation:
Human Resource Department is a department of the state that solely certifies the educational documents. Certificate verification is a significant factor in the given part of authentication. Certificate verification is needed to be done from university or board based on where the document is issued.

SDM Attestation:
Sub-Divisional Magistrate is an alternative for the State attestation in some instances. It is done when the home department attestation is not preferable.
Chamber of Commerce Attestation:
CoC is a business association & the first step in the verification of your commercial documents before the legalization of MEA. There is no involvement of state government’s in commercial documents.

MEA Attestation:
The MEA is the arm of the central government that manages foreign affairs that will provide the sticker & MEA Apostille stamp as per the requirement. It is the last step of legalization when both, the home country and destination country are members of the Hague convention.

What are the apostille services?
Apostille services are the agencies that provide assistance for procuring an apostille sticker or an MEA stamp from the central government. Ideally, these services will collect your documents & get them verified and stamped from the concerned government authorized departments and get them delivered to you. It is quite hard for an individual to do the apostille process on their own as it is not a direct process & there are different stages involved for each document type. So, it is convenient to approach such services for apostille attestation which can save your valuable energy and time.

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