Types of Attestation

State Attestation :-

State Attestation is required before Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Attestation, wherein, depending on the type of document, relevant state attestation is required. For example, in case of educational documents, attestation from State Education Department is required. In case of personal documents, Home Department or GAD of the concerned state should attest the document prior to attestation by the MEA.

Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Attestation :-

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) attest original documents to use abroad. Attestation done by the Ministry of External Affairs is of two types :-

Normal :- This is done for all the countries which are not a member of Hague Convention and where Apostille is not accepted.
Apostille :- India, since 2005, is a member of the Hague Convention of October 5, 1961 that abolished the requirement of legalization of foreign public documents. Apostille is acceptable in 81 member-countries of the Convention (For more info please visit the website: www.hcch.net). Apostille is done on personal documents like Birth/Death/Marriage Certificates, Affidavits, Power of Attorney, etc, and educational documents like Degree, Diploma, Matriculation and Secondary Level Certificates, etc. Any document Apostilled in one member country is acceptable in all the other 80 member-countries, signatory to the referred convention of 1961 thus greatly simplifying the process of attestation by making it needless to get the documents attested in each or for each of the countries separately. Under normal circumstances, once the document is Apostilled, it does not require to be attested further from the concerned embassy.
For the list of countries that require documents to be Apostilled, please refer to the following link:Click Here

Embassy Attestation:-

Document should be first authenticated from the respective State Home Department or Human Resource Department (HRD) followed by Ministry of external Affairs in New Delhi and then finally the respective Embassy will legalize the documents.