Process to get MEA Apostille on your documents

In this blog post, I explain you the procedure to get apostille on your documents, from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), of the Govt. of India. It’s primarily for students going to study abroad. But generally the procedure to apostille documents is same in most cases.

In my experience, only two countries have apostille requirements for students going there to study – Austria and Italy.

Before going further, please get a basic reading of what is apostille from the govt of India here.

So, here are the steps:

1. State govt authentication

The MEA will apostille your document only if you have the state (verification) authentication (from the respective govt of the sate where the document is issued) on your document which you want to get apostilled. On the MEA website, they detailed the officials in-charge of authentication for each states. One has to get documents authenticated from those officials only.

I have explained how to get the state govt. authentication in Tamil Nadu and Andhra in the following separate posts:

Andhra Pradesh

Tamil Nadu

I am not sure about the processes in other states. Maybe people from other states who have done this in their respective states, can add the info in the comments. As far as I know, the process is similar for other states too with slight variations. 

  2. Apostille from MEA

Once you get the authentication from your respective state governments, then you can proceed ahead and get apostille from MEA. I have visited both the MEA office in Chennai and Hyderabad. There are the documents necessary:  

• Original document (with authentication from state govt where the doc is issued)
• Photocopy of the document (including the back side where the state authentication is there)
• Photocopy of the passport (front and back pages with your info, and also the first two pages which show the president’s order and name of the official who issued your passport)* 
• Postal order – MEA charges Rs. 50 /- for apostille per document. So if you have two documents, get a postal order of Rs. 100 /- (postal orders are issued at post offices; they charge Rs. 5 /- commission for every Rs. 50 /-)

 * This is mainly asked for in Hyderabad MEA office. In Chennai, photocopies of your bio pages are enough.

At the MEA office, they check your documents and give you an application form. Fill it, submit the documents and collect the receipt. They will tell you when to come back to collect your apostilled documents.

This is how the MEA apostille normally looks like.

Additional Information

1. MEA Chennai office accepts the documents only between 10 AM – 1 PM.
2. MEA Chennai office returns the documents on the same evening, between 4:30 PM – 5 PM.
3. MEA Hyderabad office accepts documents only between 9 AM – 11 AM.
4. MEA Hyderabad office returns the documents on the next day evening, after 4 PM.
5. Please don’t go to agents immediately. Try to do the apostille process yourself unless you have lot of money or you’re very busy.
6. MEA Chennai office won’t apostille documents issued anywhere other than TN, Karnataka, Kerala and Puducherry. If your documents were authenticated, say, by GAD of AP or Telangana govt., you have to go to MEA Hyderabad office.   
7. MEA Chennai address: 

MEA Hyderabad address: