Somebody hands you a paper with a court name on it and you discover that the name is a campus, that the campus holds several courts, and that half the places disputes actually go in this city are not courts at all. This page is the map: what sits where, what is a court and what is a tribunal, and what to do on the morning you have to be somewhere. The individual guides below go into each one properly.
The confusion at the start of almost every matter comes from one word doing three jobs.
| Layer | What it is | What goes there |
|---|---|---|
| District courts | Several complexes across the city, each holding more than one district court | The ordinary civil and criminal work of the city — suits, recovery, rent, criminal trials and bail, matrimonial matters, accident claims |
| The High Court | One institution, its own building, registry, rules and bar | Constitutional writs, a large share of appeals, and the categories of matter that can only start at that level |
| Tribunals and commissions | Specialist bodies created by individual statutes — not district courts at all | Consumer complaints, company and insolvency, tax appeals, government service matters, bank recovery, real estate projects, labour disputes |
The third row is the one that catches people. A dispute that feels like an ordinary civil matter — a builder who did not deliver, a bank that debited wrongly, a job that ended badly — very often belongs to a forum created specially for it, and where a statute creates such a forum it frequently bars the civil court from the subject as well. So the first hour of any matter is better spent on “which statute governs this” than on drafting anything.
Delhi’s district judiciary is spread across several campuses, built at different times as the city grew outwards — Tis Hazari, which opened in 1958 and is the oldest, then Patiala House, Karkardooma, Rohini, Dwarka, Saket and Rouse Avenue. Each holds more than one district court.
The mapping of revenue districts onto these campuses is decided administratively, and every new campus has shifted it. You will not find that chart here, on purpose: charts like it get lifted from one website to the next and quietly rot, and the cost of a rotten one is a wasted journey across the city. Three sources stay reliable — the document you received, the official case system, and the clerk at the counter.
Each of these is written for the person who has to be there rather than for lawyers, and each one also lists the advocates on our directory who appear in that court.
Demand pehle se lagi hui hai — appeal karne se wo rukti NAHI, rukwani padti hai alag se (s.220(6)). 30 din CIT(A), phir ITAT. Aur ITAT aakhri jagah hai jahan TATHYA dekhe jaate hain.
Read the court guidePehla sawaal ye nahi ki partner ne kya kiya — pehla sawaal ye hai ki jhagda kiska hai. Company kanoon ki nazar me ALAG VYAKTI hai. s.241/244 ka darwaza, aur IBC vasooli ka zariya nahi hai.
Read the court guideYahan koi aapko BULATA nahi — bank bina adalat ke kabza leta hai. s.13(2) ke 60 din, phir s.13(4) par **45 din** me khud DRT jaana padta hai. Civil court band hai (s.34). Appeal par 50% jama.
Read the court guideYe adalat jaan-boojh kar alag banayi gayi — s.13 kehti hai advocate rakhna aapka HAQ tak nahi, s.9 pehle samjhauta karana adalat ka kartavya hai, s.14 me saboot ke niyam dheele hain, aur CONSENT wale decree par appeal HOTI HI NAHI.
Read the court guideMuawza dalil se nahi, HISAAB se banta hai — aur 2019 ke baad s.166(3) ne sirf CHHE MAHINE de rakhe hain (pehle koi seema thi hi nahi). Do raaste, income proof, disability, hit-and-run, award ki vasooli.
Read the court guideYe ek hi forum hai jo jaan-boojh kar banaya gaya hai ki aap KHUD lad sakein — aur isi wajah se log haarte hain. Commercial purpose ka jaal, 2 saal ki seema, ab apne sheher me file karo, aur appeal par 50% jama.
Read the court guideHigh Court koi “agli upar wali adalat” nahi — uske TEEN alag darwaze hain: appeal, Article 226 ka writ, aur original side. Alternative remedy, deri, certified copy, s.528 BNSS quashing, Division Bench appeal.
Read the court guideKisi agency ka summons aaya hai? Summons kehta hai HAAZIR HO — ye nahi kehta ki aap mulzim hain. Par jo us kamre me kaha, wo hamesha record par rehta hai. Bayan, dastavez ki list, talashi, freeze.
Read the court guideSarkar ke khilaf maamla — aap vyakti se nahi, PRAKRIYA se lad rahe hain. RTI se file pehle nikaalo, representation, s.80 CPC ka do mahine ka notice, tribunal banaam writ banaam suit.
Read the court guideCourt ye nahi dhoondhta ki hua kya tha — wo tay karta hai ki SAABIT kya hua. Issues, burden, cross-examination, document kaise prove hote hain, aur wo certificate jiske bina WhatsApp screenshot bekaar hai.
Read the court guideFamily court — dono paksh ke liye likha, kisi ki taraf liye bina. DV case CIVIL hai criminal nahi, mutual banaam contested, maintenance aur custody asal me kaise tay hote hain, aur settlement kaisa likha jaye jo tike. Shahdara, East aur North-East zilon ki adalatein bhi yahi complex hai.
Read the court guideGiraftari ke baad ka pehla din, aur wo saari GHADIYAN jo aapke bina chal padti hain — 24 ghante ki peshi, custody, default bail, aur kyun bail milne ka matlab rihai nahi hota.
Read the court guideSouth Delhi ka court complex — aur us se pehle ka asli sawaal: aapke case par kis court ki taakat hai? Subject-matter, pecuniary aur territorial jurisdiction, agreement ka jurisdiction clause, aur galat jagah file karne ka kharcha.
Read the court guideDelhi ka sabse purana aur sabse bada court complex — kaunse maamle yahan jaate hain, kamra kaise dhoondhein, din kaise chalta hai, aur pehli taareekh par asal me kya hota hai.
Read the court guideAll court guides, and how the courts of Delhi fit together ›
Whichever campus you end up at, the mechanics do not change, and knowing them is most of what makes a first visit bearable.
All of that is set out at length, with what to carry and what a hearing day actually feels like, on our Tis Hazari page — it applies at every complex and there was no reason to write it out three times.
People start with “which court is near me”. The law starts somewhere else. A court has power over your case only if all three of these are satisfied: the subject belongs to a court of that kind at all, the value is within what that level can hear, and the geography connects — the property, the defendant’s residence or business, or where the events happened.
Getting any one of them wrong does not lose you the case on merits; it loses you months, the cost of drafting done twice, and occasionally the claim itself if a limitation period runs out meanwhile. Our page on jurisdiction works through all three, along with jurisdiction clauses in contracts and what happens when a plaint is returned.
The criminal side behaves differently from everything above, because the early part of it is governed by deadlines that run whether or not anybody in the family knows about them — a production within twenty-four hours, a custody period with an end date, a bail right that has to be claimed before it closes, a warrant that gets worse if it is left alone.
If somebody has been arrested or a notice or warrant has arrived, go straight to our Rohini page, which is written for exactly that first day.
Nobody has to grant you access to your own matter. Delhi’s district courts publish through the official eCourts service, searchable by case number, by a party’s name, by the advocate or by the filing number, with each day’s list alongside; the High Court and the tribunals run their own. An evening spent learning it buys you years of not having to ask.
Stay with the official source. Mirror sites wrap the same data in advertising and some of them lag behind, and a wrong next date is the standard way a hearing gets missed.
Specialisation by forum matters more than most people assume, and often more than seniority: the person you want is somebody who does this kind of matter, in this kind of forum, regularly. Our guide to choosing an advocate sets out what to look at and the questions worth asking, and whether you need a lawyer at all deals honestly with the cases where the answer is no.
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Send us a photograph of whatever paper you have, or just tell us what happened. We will tell you which forum it points to, what has to be ready before the date, and whether the part you need is a document or an advocate. The directory is free and we take no commission from anybody on it.
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