What is an apostille meaning?
Apostille is the legalisation of documents by the government so that these documents can be used in a foreign country.An Apostille is simply a certification of Document issued by a legal or registered authority in a country. If a document is Apostilled it shows that the document is verified and it is legal to use in the country to which it is Apostilled. For each country there is a different Apostille. List of countries where the Apostille is Accepted as the highest order of legalisation are known as The Hague Nation Convention.
There are three main verification that needs to be done to get Apostille stamp on documents.
- Notary from authorised Personnel
- State Authorisation from concerned state department or secretariat or SDM Attestation depending on the procedure
- MEA Apostille
There is one more step involved finally, if the country you want to get Apostille is not a Hague nation then,
- Legalisation from Embassy of the Country ( only if country is not in Hague Convention)
When to get state authentication and MEA apostille?
Every document in India belongs to one of the 29 states or union territory. So, normally everyone thinks to get the State attestation first. But it is largely time consuming and very costly task.
We have a way out here in our website. Before choosing any Authentication, First check whether your destination country belongs to Hague nation list or not.
CASE 1: If it is not in the list, you must get the State Attestation
CASE 2: Country is in the Hague Convection but it is Italy/Austria then you must get the State Attestation.
CASE 3: Document from the States Punjab/Haryana/Goa/UttarPradesh then you must get the State Attestation whether your destination country belongs to Hague nation or not.
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 who signed the document.
- Designation of the signed person.
- Place of certification date of certification.
- Number of certificate.
- Seal or stamp of authority issuing certificate.