Certificate Attestation Process in India 

In most cases, you will not be able to get your visa without an attested certificate. You are required to provide your documents to the authorities for attestation. Document attestation is necessary to prove the authenticity of the documents that you provided while applying for a visa. Therefore, the country that you intend to travel wants you to get the documents attested by their embassy in your country.

Certificate attestation process in India is done through the authorized agencies. You can individually do the certificate attestation process from some of the offices in India. However, if go through authorized agencies, you can avoid the difficulties of going to different departments for the purpose of attestation.

In India, Certificate Attestation is mainly done in four phases. 

They are:

i) Verification from the documents issued Universities or departments. 

II) HRD Attestation or Attestation from the Human Resource Development Department. 

iii) MEA Attestation from the Ministry of External Affairs, India. 

iv) Embassy or Consulate Attestation from the documents issued Country.

Certificate Attestation process starts from the Verification of the documents. Verification of the certificates is mandatory for getting the HRD attestation on the documents. This is the first process to be completed. The verification process has to be done from the centre of issue of the documents like Universities, boards, departments, institutes etc prior to  submitting the same for HRD Attestation for almost all the documents. Some State HRD attestation departments are asking the verification of certificates after submitting the original certificates to the State HRD attestation department.

The next phase in certificate attestation is done by the Ministry of External Affairs [MEA]. Ministry of External Affairs provides two types of attestations: (1) MEA Attestation and (2) Apostille Attestation.

After finishing Verification, HRD and MEA attestation, the certificates are submitted to the embassy of the country that you are planning to travel. They will verify the certificates and provide attestation. Consulate attestation will be sufficient for some countries instead of embassy attestation. The Embassy or Consulate attestation has to be done from the documents issued country.

Other than the Government departments, there are some authorized certification agencies in India that provide attestation services. They will help you to avoid the trouble of going through departments for certificate attestation. Certificate attestation agencies have a wide network connected with government agencies. The agencies will do the attestation process in a secure and timely manner. Some agencies even give certificate attestation within a very limited time. 

The certificate attestation process could be more time-consuming and complicated if you are not aware of the procedures. It may be a wrong step to hand over the documents to the fake or unauthorized agencies or the agencies with one or two offices because the Attestation procedures have to be completed from different locations. You cannot do the attestation process from a single city or location. Eg: Verification process of the certificate has to be done from the documents issued centers such as University/Board/Institute; the HRD attestation process has to be done from the State HRD Attestation departments; the MEA attestation has to be done from the Ministry of External Affairs and the final attestation from the documents issued country, such as Embassy or Consulate Attestation has to be done from the Embassy or the Consulate of the concerned foreign Country, where the candidates want to travel.