From January 2015, the requirements of the Indian Drivers Licence Verification has changed.
VFS will no longer accept notarised documents that have been authenticated by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). Instead, documents must now be stamped with an apostille from DFAT.
Unfortunately, these changes were made in silence - only appearing in an updated checklist on the VFS website sometime in January 2015. There was no warning, notification or announcement of the change. VFS is not offering any sort of transition period for documents that have already been authenticated meaning that documents that had already been authenticated will now be rejected.
Of course for many of our clients, who have previously authenticated their documents but not lodged them with VFS for whatever reason (ie, they are waiting on other documents) this change becomes another inconvenience in the long list of other inconveniences and hurdles put in front of them by the bureaucratic red tape and government processes.
(if you have trouble viewing the flowchart because of the size of your screen, you can use the enlarge and reduce buttons on the left corner to adjust the size to fit).
Special Offers and Current Pricing
So what can we do to help? If you find that you have been caught out by this change, and depending on when your documents were notarised or authenticated, we are offering discount specials to help clients like you 'fix' their documents with an apostille in order for VFS to accept them.For everyone else, we are pleased to announce that even though the cost of the apostille is higher than authentication, for a limited time we are keeping our existing pricing and absorbing the price difference ourselves - which means savings for you!
To obtain a quote on our notary public services for India, please visit https://www.notary-parramatta.com.au/notary-fees/.
Acknowledgements
This blog is supported and maintained by Phang Legal. Phang Legal is a leading provider of notary public services in Sydney. With offices conveniently located in Parramatta, Phang Legal supports and services the Indian community across Sydney with readily available and easily accessible notary public services at highly competitive rates.
For more information regarding notary public services for documents going to India, view our notary publications at https://www.notary-parramatta.com.au/jurisdiction/india-notary/.
Frequently asked questions regarding our notary public services can also be found at https://www.notary-parramatta.com.au/faqs/.
For Hindi to English translation services by NAATI accredited translators, see https://hindi-naati-translation.blogspot.com.au/.
Notary Public
Ern Phang is the solicitor director of Phang Legal and a notary public. Ern regularly writes about his experiences as a notary public, including the kinds of problems and solutions that his clients face when sending documents to India.
IMPORTANT: the information in this article is correct at the time of publication, however the law constantly changes. This means you should always refer to the most recent articles because we try to update this blog on a regular basis with the most current information.
