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India acceded to the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalization for Foreign Public Documents in 1966. Therefore no diplomatic authentication or legalization of documents from India is required for the legal communication with another member state of the convention. The documents only need to be stamped with an "apostille" by the issuing state's authorities in order to be valid in the state of destination.
Responsible for issuing the apostille is Ministry of Foreign Affaires. Before submitting documents for apostille, they must be pre-certified by the authorized bodies of the respective territorial administrative units (if it comes to personal documents, then the General Affairs Department of the local government, if educational, then in the Education Department, if commercial, then in chambers of commerce and industry). In each of the above bodies, only a few specially authorized officials can pre-certify documents.
Documents issued by Indian authorities or other authorized bodies published in Hindi, English or other official languages can be legalized.
The process of legalization of documents in India includes verification of their authenticity. After passing through this procedure, a special stamp - an apostille - is affixed to the document (or to its certified copy). As a rule, the apostille is placed on the back of the document, or on a separate sheet, after which the document is stitched.
An apostille is a stamp of rectangular shape. The heading "Apostille (Convention de La Haye du 5 Octobre 1961)" must be in French. The stamp indicates the signature verified by the apostille, the date and the identification number of the apostille itself.
The following documents can be authenticated by apostille:
- Certificates of civil status (certificates of birth, death, marriage and divorce)
- Education documents (school reports, certificates, diplomas)
- Excerpts from the commercial register
- Judicial decisions
- Notarially certified copies of documents
- Notarially certified translations
- Further notarial documents (authorizations, last will, declarations)
- Commercial documents legalized by a state organ of registration (articles of incorporation, registration certificates, tax registrations etc.)
Requirements for the documents:
An apostille can be issued exclusively on an original document. Therefore, the latter must be in an apparent good condition, all stamps and signatures have to be clear and readable. Furthermore, it must not contain alien marking and labels.
Additional services
In addition to the legalization of your documents, we can provide you with high quality translations.
If you want to bring company information before the court, it needs to be legalised as well. We are therefore offering extracts from the commercial register of India including apostille and translation.
India Apostille Service - Original Documents Express Service
14 Business Days Service