Ministry of External Affairs attestation procedure requires many stages of prior authentication before verifying the documents. The whole process for central document authentication relies upon the type of documents i.e personal, educational or commercial. The procedure is listed below:

• Regional level:

  It is the initial stage of the certificate authentication procedure. This level of legalization can be done by the notary or the University from where the documents were issued, as per the requirement or from the Chamber of commerce in the case of commercial documents.

• State Attestation:

  The legalization of certificates from the state is performed by three different organizations as per the necessity of the document type. These departments are the State Home Department (SHD), Human Resource Department (HRD), and the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM). SDM is independent of the state government, however, the verification performed by this authority is considered on the state level.

• MEA attestation:

  MEA or Ministry of External Affairs is the last stage of authentication from the home government after which an MEA stamp or sticker is applied to the document. MEA is the central organization that concerns with the foreign affairs of the country and elects a minister every five years.