Attestation of academic docs.

Foreign countries do not recognise any of the degrees of India. So the degrees need to be attested by the government of India. Of course the departments responsible for these are as follows.

STEP 1: The academic degree needs to be attested by the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry (In other words, this is also the ministry of education). This particular ministry has all the information needed to know whether a college or university is authentic or not. Therefore their attestation is needed on the academic degree (of course on the back - if the degree is laminated then the lamination on the back should be removed. Get professional help). HRD attestation centres are available in most of the state capitals. The list of centres can be downloaded from the HRD link below. Also an application form is needed to be submitted with the academic degree, this also can be downloaded from the link below. Time required for attestation: roughly an hour or more depending on the centres load. Also the charge for this is only Rs 50 as one needs to make an Indian Postal Order for Rs 50 and submit with the document.
Click HERE for downloading attestation related documents from HRD website (One needs PDF reader).

STEP 2: After getting the HRD attestation, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) needs to attest the academic degree. This is because any foreign related Embassy in India recognises any document attested by the MEA as they are in direct contact with each other. Of course the Embassies verify the attested document with the MEA office. This attestation is done only in Delhi at Patiala House near India Gate. Time period for attestation: One can collect it in one hour after submission. No charges for this as it is a compulsory step after HRD attestation.

STEP 3: After the MEA attestation, one can submit the documents with the respective Embassy depending upon their submission time and collection time. Some Embassies collect in morning hours and return in the afternoons or even take a couple of days to return the academic document. Charges for the attestation varies from Embassy to Embassy. All the embassies are situated at Delhi in Chanakyapuri area.

The whole attestation process is not a lengthy one but then again we are talking about Indian government officials. Anyway, the documents that need to be carried with one to the HRD ministry attestation centre is the Academic Degree, Cumulative Marksheet (or Individual marksheet if cumulative is not there) and the Passport. Xerox/Photocopies of the above three documents should be submitted with the application form. The passport will be instantly returned after verifying with the copy. So no submission of the passport. The academic degree and cumulative marsheet will be returned within the hour. For MEA, the academic degree needs to be only submitted for attestation, but one can carry the cumulative marksheet and passport just in case for showing. For submission in the Embassy, only the academic degree is needed. In this case also Passport should be carried just in case for showing. In general all these attestation work is done by the person itself or his/her relative. There are official attestation agencies which go through all the above process on behalf of a person, of course they charge money which starts generally above Rs. 5000 onwards.