Apostille

An Apostille is attached to your original document to verify it is legitimate and authentic so it will be accepted in one of the other countries who are members of the Hague Apostille Convention. Apostille is done for 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 104 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

Authentication of documents:

All original documents/copies requiring attestation or Apostille should be first authenticated by the designated authorities of the State/Union Territory from where the document has been issued. In case of personal documents, Home/General Administration Department of the concerned State Government/Union Territory are the designated authorities. In case of educational documents, the documents should first be authenticated by the Education Department of the concerned State Government/Union Territory. The details of the Regional Authentication Centres (RACs) in the state from where pre-authenticated documents are accepted are as follows:

Tamilnadu	1	Under Secretary, (Foreigners) Department, Government of Tamil Nadu, Chennai
	2	Office of the Resident Commissioner of Tamil Nadu in New Delhi.

Legalization of documents:

The Ministry of External Affairs thereafter, legalizes the documents on the basis of the signature of the designated signing authorities of the State Government/Union Territory/Chambers of Commerce. Hence it does not take responsibility of the contents of the documents.

Applicant can submit and collect documents directly at the under-mentioned Branch Secretariats of the Ministry of External Affairs. They also Attest/Apostille documents in addition to MEA

Chennai

Ministry of External Affairs Branch Secretariat, 68, College Road, E.V.K. Sampath Maaligai, 7th Floor, Numgambakkam, Chennai -600006. Phone : 044-28252200044-28252200, 28251323 Email :usbs.chennai@mea.gov.in

Please don’t opt an agent for getting your certificates apostilled, do you it by yourself and it will not take more than 3 working days and it will cost you just Rs-50/- only.

In my case I didn’t have much time to research about the above mentioned procedures, so I had to rely on an agent who helped me in getting the Apostille of the marriage certificate. It took exactly 2 working days and it was comparatively quite expensive. 

From our experience in Chennai Embassy, Apostille is NOT a must, but it will help us in getting the visa bit faster than without Apostille.

References:

1. https://www.hcch.net/en/states/hcch-members
2. http://www.mea.gov.in/