Notary
The oath under section 8(1)(e) of the Notaries Act, 1952 is administered to a person. Attestation of execution under section 8(1)(a) certifies that a person signed or acknowledged before the Notary. Neither act can be performed over a video call, by email, or on an affirmation given on the telephone. Anyone offering to notarise your document without seeing you is offering you a document that will not withstand the first serious question asked of it.
Why the presence requirement is the whole point
A notarial seal is worth something precisely because it records that a named individual, identified from original documents, stood in front of the Notary and did something — swore, signed, acknowledged. Remove the appearance and there is nothing left to certify. That is why section 8(2) requires signature and official seal on an act personally performed, and why the act is entered in the Notarial Register in Form XV under Rule 11(2), where it can be checked against a real event on a real date.
Rule 15: a Notary practises in a defined area
Rule 15 of the Notaries Rules, 1956 requires a Notary to have his office within the area named in his certificate of practice, and the area appears on the seal itself under Rule 12. This is why the phrase “outstation notary” needs unpicking. A Notary appointed for Vadodara practises from Vadodara. He does not open a counter in Surat, and a document sworn in Rajkot before a Vadodara Notary who never went there is a document with a problem written into its own face.
What we can genuinely do at a distance
- Draft. This is the bulk of the value and it needs no physical meeting at all. Tell us what the receiving office asked for, send the supporting documents by email or WhatsApp, and we prepare the instrument in Gujarati or English.
- Advise on what you actually need. Very often the answer is that you need something different from what you were told, or nothing at all — a self-declaration, an online submission, a form the department accepts self-attested.
- Work out the stamp position. Which article of the Schedule to the Gujarat Stamp Act, 1958 applies, and what has to be paid before execution. We are a Government authorised e-Stamping centre, CSC ID 136237240013, so the e-stamp certificate can be generated here and sent ahead.
- Courier. Papers go out to you, come back executed where the act was properly performed at your end.
- Coordinate. Tell you exactly what to ask the Notary or the Indian mission where you are, so the document comes back in a form that works here.
If you are outside Vadodara but inside Gujarat
Come to the office, or ask us to attend your address if you are within the area we practise in — Rule 10(3) provides a travelling allowance of ₹20 per kilometre and the Rules plainly contemplate the Notary travelling to the client. See notary home visit. If your address is well outside that, the sensible answer is a Notary local to you for the act itself, with the drafting and the stamping done here. We will say so.
If you are outside India
The document is executed before a notary public where you are and then authenticated, usually through the Indian mission, and stamped in Gujarat before it is used. For a power of attorney, note two things. Section 33 of the Registration Act, 1908 requires a POA used to present documents for registration to be authenticated. And section 84 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023 directs a court to presume that a power of attorney executed before and authenticated by a Notary Public was so executed and authenticated — a presumption as to execution, not as to the truth of the contents, and rebuttable. See power of attorney stamping.
Send us the requirement and the papers. We draft, tell you the correct stamp position, and generate the e-stamp. You attend once — here, or before a Notary where you are — and the appearance takes minutes because everything else is finished. That is the fastest this can honestly be made, and it is a great deal faster than discovering at the counter that the draft was wrong.
Signing for someone who cannot travel at all
Where a person genuinely cannot come and cannot be attended on, the route is a power of attorney properly executed by them where they are, in favour of someone who can act here. That is a real instrument with real limits — it does not transfer property, as Suraj Lamp & Industries (P) Ltd. v. State of Haryana (2011) confirmed, and it must be drafted to the specific act it is meant to authorise. What it is not is a workaround for the presence requirement in the person's own affidavit: a deponent's oath is personal to the deponent.
What to bring
- A scan of the letter or checklist from the office that asked for the document
- Scans of the supporting papers, front and back, readable
- Full names, addresses and identity numbers of everyone who will sign
- The city or country where the signatory actually is, told to us at the start
- A courier address and a contact number that works there
- Any deadline the receiving office has set