Tripura 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.

• Case status — on the High Court's site by case number, party name or advocate; the eCourts-wide CNR, the unique 16-character Case Number Record, is the fastest key, and works across the eCourts ecosystem.
• Orders and judgments — daily orders are published on the court's site, and full-text judgment search runs through the eCourts judgments portal. Both are free.
• Certified copies — apply at the copying counter; the fee and page rates follow the court's certified-copy schedule, which the counter posts. Ask for the schedule in writing if it is not displayed.
• Listing — cause lists are published on the site; check them the evening before, not at the gate.

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 Tripura accordingly maintains an RTI page on its site with its rules and designated officers; applications for administrative records go to the court's CPIO, normally in the Registrar's office.

What you can ask for by RTI:

• Pendency and disposal statistics for a case type or bench.
• Listing and caus-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 Central Public Information Officer,
High Court of Tripura, Agartala

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

1. Pendency of [CASE TYPE] matters 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]

A writ petition of Dr. Shrawan Kumar Pathak's — pension fixation, the classic slow file — went unlisted for six consecutive cause lists while “awaiting placement” explained nothing. An RTI asking for the listing norms and the dates his file was marked to each bench produced a reply showing the file had twice been placed before a bench that had risen for the day. The next listing was accommodated within a fortnight of the reply reaching the Registrar's office. The court had done nothing wrong; the record had simply never been asked to speak.

• 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), to the State Information Commission or the Central Information Commission as the court's rules direct.

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.

Apply for a certified copy at the counter 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.

• 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: 26 August 2026.