Supreme Court of India
The court of last resort. CourtNetra integrates the SC's daily cause list, SLP-to-Civil-Appeal renumbering on grant of leave, the Reportable / Daily Order distinction, Constitution-bench flagging, and Article 139A Transfer Petition tracking — all in one unified hearing diary that also covers the 25 High Courts, eCourts District Courts, and 7 tribunals.
- Established
- 28 January 1950
- Sanctioned strength
- 34 (incl. CJI)
- Seat
- New Delhi
- Constitutional anchor
- Articles 124-147
Constitutional structure and jurisdiction
The Supreme Court of India was established under Article 124 of the Constitution and began functioning on 28 January 1950, two days after the Constitution came into force. It is the highest judicial forum and final court of appeal in India. The constitutional structure assigns it three principal jurisdictions:
- Original jurisdiction under Article 131 — disputes between the Government of India and one or more States, or between States. Original jurisdiction is also exercised over Article 32 writ petitions filed directly for enforcement of fundamental rights.
- Appellate jurisdiction under Articles 132-134 — appeals from High Court judgments in constitutional, civil, and criminal matters, with the SC's special leave power under Article 136 sweeping in the discretionary appellate power that accounts for the bulk of the Court's docket.
- Advisory jurisdiction under Article 143 — the President of India may refer questions of law or fact of public importance for the Court's opinion. Advisory references are rare but constitutionally significant (e.g. In re Berubari, In re Special Reference 1 of 2002).
The Court's sanctioned strength is 34 judges including the Chief Justice of India, raised from 31 in 2019. Working strength varies; refer to the live roster on the SC website. The CJI assigns benches and constitutes Constitution Benches under Article 145(3) where a substantial question of law as to the interpretation of the Constitution is involved (5-judge minimum; 7-judge and 9-judge benches for matters of broader importance).
How CourtNetra covers the Supreme Court
- 1. Daily cause-list auto-fetchCourtNetra polls the SC portal every 4-6 hours during the working day. Cause lists for the next working day are typically published the previous evening (6 PM IST baseline; 9-11 PM delayed publications happen). The polling cadence catches both the standard publication window and late updates without manual refreshes.
- 2. SLP-to-Civil-Appeal renumbering trackingA Special Leave Petition under Article 136 is filed with one number; on grant of leave it converts to a Civil Appeal with a fresh number. CourtNetra holds both numbers on the same matter so the filing-stage history and the post-leave history appear in one timeline. This is the single biggest source of "lost" matters in spreadsheet-managed SC practices.
- 3. Reportable / Daily Order distinctionThe SC portal distinguishes Daily Orders (most pronouncements) from Reportable Judgments (the subset marked by the bench and indexed for citation). CourtNetra surfaces both, with the Reportable subset filtered separately so post-hearing citation-cleanup is one click rather than a manual reading sweep.
- 4. Constitution-bench flaggingListings before benches of 5, 7, or 9 judges are detected and tagged distinctly on the daily digest. Constitution-bench listings often have peculiar cause-list formats — CourtNetra's parser handles the variants.
- 5. Transfer Petition historyTransfer Petitions under Article 139A or Section 25 CPC carry an originating-court reference. CourtNetra fetches the pre-transfer history from the originating High Court and splices it onto the SC matter timeline, so the bench seeing the petition is reading the full history, not just the SC snippet.
- 6. Diary-number-to-case-number transitionOn filing, the SC issues a diary number; once defects are cured and the matter is registered, a case number is assigned. CourtNetra accepts the diary number as the queryable identifier throughout filing-stage and switches to the case number once registration is recorded.
NyayaLens AI on Supreme Court judgments
NyayaLens AI — CourtNetra's research engine — is built on a 43,333-judgment Supreme Court corpus with 47,995 citation edges and a 116-row overruled-status table. The retrieval stack uses 2,560-dimensional Qwen3-Embedding-4B vectors with HNSW indexing alongside tsvector BM25 lexical search, with a cross-encoder rerank at the top of the funnel.
Every cited authority comes back with one of three badges — ✓ verified, ⚠ probable, or ✗ unverified. The ladder is corpus-anchored: exact match against the 43K corpus, fuzzy title match with year-proximity verification, and (Sprint 3) Anthropic Citations API tool-grounding. After the SC's February 2026 ruling in Mercy v. Mankind escalating AI-hallucinated citations to professional misconduct, the every-citation-marked posture is the disciplinary defence the Bar Council expects.
Treatment status — good law / distinguished / doubted / overruled — is surfaced inline so a citation is never just "the case exists" but "the case exists, and here is its treatment-as-of-today position in the citation graph."
Frequently asked
How do I track Supreme Court case status by case number on CourtNetra?
Add the matter to your CourtNetra dashboard with the diary number, case type and year, or CNR. CourtNetra polls the SC portal every 4-6 hours during the working day and updates the matter timeline automatically. Notifications go out over WhatsApp, email, and the dashboard for every cause-list change. The next-morning hearing diary aggregates all listings across all your matters.
Does CourtNetra differentiate between Daily Orders and Reportable Judgments?
Yes. The SC portal distinguishes Daily Orders (most pronouncements) from Reportable Judgments (a smaller subset marked by the bench and indexed for citation). CourtNetra surfaces both, with the Reportable subset filtered separately in the matter timeline so citation-cleanup is faster.
How does CourtNetra handle the SLP-to-Civil-Appeal renumbering when leave is granted?
A Special Leave Petition under Article 136 is filed with one number; if leave is granted, it converts to a Civil Appeal with a new number. CourtNetra tracks both numbers on the same matter so the filing-stage history (SLP) and the post-leave history (Civil Appeal) appear in one timeline.
Does CourtNetra cover Constitution-bench matters?
Yes. Constitution-bench matters (under Article 145(3), 5+ judges) are flagged in the matter type and the cause-list parser tags them distinctly. Listings before larger benches (7-judge, 9-judge) are also detected and surfaced separately on the daily digest.
What about Transfer Petitions filed under Article 139A?
Transfer Petitions are tracked with both the originating court (the High Court the matter was transferred from) and the SC diary/registration number. CourtNetra surfaces pre-transfer history from the originating HC alongside the SC timeline.
Is the NyayaLens AI corpus limited to Supreme Court judgments?
Today the NyayaLens corpus covers 43,333 Supreme Court judgments with 47,995 citation edges and a 116-row overruled-status table. High Court judgment corpus is on the Q4 2026 roadmap. SC judgments are deeply enough citation-graphed to ground a working research workflow today.
SC + 25 HCs + eCourts + 7 tribunals — one diary
The full leverage is in the unified daily digest across every court your matters touch, with the AI research engine grounded on the 43K-judgment SC corpus. 3-day free trial — no card.