Karnataka High Court: case status, orders and RTI

A High Court is two institutions in one building. As a court, it produces judgments and orders you obtain through court procedure. As an establishment, it holds administrative records — vacancies, budgets, listing policy, recruitment — that are ordinary disclosable government records. Litigants lose months by asking the wrong institution for the right thing.

The court traces its origin to the Chief Court of Mysore, reconstituted with three judges under the Mysore Chief Court Regulation I of 1884 — the court's own history page carries this line. Today it works across three benches, and everything a citizen needs arrives through two doors: the portals for case records, and the RTI Act for the machine room.

• Case status — on the High Court's site by case number, party name or advocate, with bench-wise search for Bengaluru, Dharwad and Kalaburagi. The eCourts-wide CNR, the unique 16-character Case Number Record, is the fastest key and works across the eCourts ecosystem, including the hcservices.ecourts.gov.in High Court services site.
• Orders and judgments — the portal publishes daily orders, interim orders, final orders and full judgment search. There is even a blockchain-based e-judgment verification feature for checking the authenticity of a copy.
• Certified copies — apply through the certified-copy status tab or at the copying counter. The fee follows the court's certified-copy schedule; ask for the schedule in writing if it is not displayed.
• Cause lists — published bench-wise and as weekly and warning lists. Check the evening before, not at the gate. The portal also carries Lok Adalat and mediation cause lists.

Courts are public authorities under the RTI Act — a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court affirmed in November 2019, in the Subhash Chandra Agarwal case, that even the office of the Chief Justice of India is one. The High Court of Karnataka accordingly runs an RTI window: the site links online applications to the state portal rtionline.karnataka.gov.in, and offline applications go to the court's CPIO, normally in the Registrar's office at the principal bench.

What you can ask for by RTI:

• Pendency and disposal statistics for a case type or bench, including the NJDG numbers.
• Listing and cause-list policy, and why a case was not listed on given dates.
• Recruitment, vacancies and infrastructure records.
• Any administrative file in which you are the affected party.

What stays outside RTI: the judicial record itself — pleadings, orders in the file — which travels by certified copy and inspection, not by section 6.

To:
The Public Information Officer,
High Court of Karnataka, Bengaluru 560001

Sir/Madam, under section 6 of the RTI Act 2005,
kindly provide:

1. Pendency of [CASE TYPE] matters before the
   [Bengaluru/Dharwad/Kalaburagi] bench as on [DATE],
   with the number pending beyond 5 and 10 years.
2. The number of such matters disposed in the last
   12 months.
3. The norms governing preparation of the daily cause
   list, and the reason case No. [NUMBER] was not
   listed on [DATES].
4. The name and designation of the officer responsible
   for listing in respect of my case.
5. The procedure and fee schedule for certified copies
   and inspection of records.

Rs. 10 application fee paid as per the court's RTI rules.

Yours faithfully,
[Name, address, phone]

• Day 30, no reply — first appeal within 30 days, section 19(1); the FAA in the court is usually a Senior Registrar; decision within 30 days, extendable to 45.
• Adverse order — second appeal within 90 days, section 19(3). For the High Court's establishment the appeal lies as the court's RTI rules direct — check the RTI page on the portal before filing, and to the State Information Commission where the rules so provide.

Yes — case status, cause lists, daily orders and judgment search all cost nothing. Only certified copies carry a fee.

No — judicial records follow court procedure: certified copies and inspection. RTI covers the court's administrative side. Ask the counter for the file; ask the CPIO for the system.

Start with the CPIO at the bench where the matter pends; section 6(3) obliges a transfer within 5 days if the record sits elsewhere, so a wrong address costs days, not the application.

Apply for a certified copy first. If the application itself ages without output, that delay — an administrative failure — is exactly what an RTI to the CPIO fixes.

Then the district court establishment is the relevant public authority, and the eCourts portal for that court carries status and orders. See the NJDG guide for the statistics layer across all courts.

Yes — the High Court's site links to rtionline.karnataka.gov.in, the Karnataka RTI web portal, besides the physical route to the CPIO.

• All eCourts and judicial guides
• RTI for court case delay
• NJDG — the national pendency dashboard
• Citizen RTI Playbook
• The RTI Playbook book — drafting, appeals and deadlines in one place.

Last reviewed: 27 August 2026. judiciary.karnataka.gov.in verified live; the old karnatakajudiciary.kar.nic.in address no longer connects (its own redirect page points to the new domain). The 1884 origin, the three benches and the RTI Online link are quoted from the court's own portal pages fetched today.