I finally received my documents with apostille seal on them.  In this post, all the procedures and necessary steps in details along with some tips that might help people in getting their documents apostilled in timely and non-frustrated way, is listed.

All the information would be split into 2 parts. Second post would soon follow.

This information is current as of April 2nd 2014 and applicable for educational documents ONLY.

Pre-attestation:

My documents originated from Maharashtra state, hence I needed state attestation prior to submitting documents for apostille. According to the stated information at MEA Official Site, one needs to get educational documents attested by Joint Secretory of Higher and Technical Education.

Unfortunately, the information listed on the MEA site is incomplete, as before the Joint Secretory can affix the documents, it must be stamped by the originating university's registrar/controller of examination followed Notary by notarized person, ending with stamp from Home department of the state government. Thus the following steps apply:

I.              Get all the originals that you wish to aspotille, stamped from the relevant university (incase of higher education documents) or relevant examination board (incase of secondary or higher secondary education documents).

  • Be sure that the stamp is on original and the stamp states: 'This documents has been verified and found OK' OR 'This documents has been checked and found authentic' etc.
  • The stamp must also accompany signature of relevant examination authority like registrar/controller of examination etc.
  • In my case, the people at University refused to provide me such stamp claiming such stamp is not provided on originals or even on provisional certificate. First day was spend trying to convince them, but when all option failed, a direct application to Vice-Chancellor (VC) did wonders. The VC ordered the authorities to provide me with the stamps as he was pretty much aware of what exactly apostille is and its purpose! Overall, this process took 3 days.

II.            Get all the documents notarized by a notary person. You can search for notary person near you from this page. The notary must be of Rs. 25 stamp.

  •  It might happen that the Notary person would deny notarizing the original documents, as happened in my case. The solution to this problem would be to approach the Notary person with reference from someone who knows him and if it still doesn't work then contact the Home Department of your state and have the person talk with them to clarify the issue.
  • This process should at-most take 1 hour, but due to reasons above it took me around  5 hours to convince and then for them to provide me with notary.

Next part would be about state attestation and final apostille procedures.