How to Check eCourts Case Status by CNR or Party Name

You check eCourts case status by typing a 16-character Case Number Record (CNR) into the portal for that court, with no spaces and no hyphens. If you do not have the CNR, the same portals search by case number, party name or advocate name once you have picked the right court complex. The Supreme Court of India uses its own case-status pages, including a CNR page, and they are not the district-court site.

This guide is for advocates, clerks and juniors who need the current status, the next date and the orders on a real matter. It maps each search to the district, High Court and Supreme Court screens as they stood on 8 October 2026. Portal labels move. If a button is not where this page puts it, follow the label on the screen and treat this as the map, not as a substitute for the record.

Key takeaways

• A CNR search is the one that does not ask you to guess the state, the district or the court complex.
• Case-number, filing-number, party and advocate searches all depend on the court you selected first, and on the year box you filled.
• District courts, High Courts and the Supreme Court are three different sites.
• Copy court, year, case type, parties, next date and the order dates into the noting. A name match alone is not a matter match.
• The government's SMS line and the eCourts Services app answer the same question. They do not replace the order.

Which portal do you open for an eCourts case status search?#

Open the site that actually holds that court. A CNR from a district court will not resolve on the Supreme Court form, and a diary number will not resolve on the district home page.

The district home page tells you to enter the 16-character alphanumeric CNR without a hyphen or a space, then press Search. If you do not know the CNR, it points you to Case Status for the case registration number, the party name, the advocate name and the rest. The High Court home page gives the same CNR instruction. On 8 October 2026 the Delhi High Court case-status menu inside High Court services listed Case Number, FIR Number, Party Name, Advocate Name, Filing Number, Act, Case Type, and Case Orders/Judgement. Other High Courts on that service use the same shell. A bench that has left it will label the tabs differently. [VERIFY: any High Court that no longer uses the national High Court services menu.]

The Supreme Court list above is the set of case-status pages linked from sci.gov.in. Diary number, case number and advocate-on-record search are a separate skill from a district CNR search. The field-by-field note for those pages is [LINK: supreme-court-case-status].

Two identifiers get confused on every noting.

A CNR is the 16-character id. You can search it without choosing a court complex.

A case number is the type, the serial and the year the court uses in daily speech: "CS 214 of 2024", "WP (C) 3182 of 2026", "SLP (C) 901 of 2025". Those examples are formats, not matters. To search a case number you must already know the court, the case type and which year the form wants.

A filing number is earlier still. The registry assigns it when the papers are lodged, often before a case number exists. The year box for a filing-number search is the filing year. The year box for a case-number search is the registration year. Those years differ whenever a matter is lodged in one year and registered in the next. The eCourts Services app help keeps them apart. Mixing them is the usual reason a real matter looks missing.

A diary number belongs to the Supreme Court registry. Use it for a fresh filing. Use the case number once the matter is registered. [VERIFY: whether a registered Supreme Court matter stays searchable by its diary number on the current form.]

How do you check eCourts case status with a CNR number?#

Paste the 16 characters and search. You do not select a state for this path. You do select the right website.

The eCommittee manual Case Management through CIS 3.0 describes the district and taluka CNR in section 10.3. It calls the CNR a unique 16-digit number, then shows letters in the state and district codes. The parts it prints are:

That illustration is the manual's teaching example. Do not treat the joined string as a case you need to open. Count 16 characters when you join the parts. The manual's own example is two letters, two letters, two digits, six digits and four digits. Scafffold accepts a CNR in that shape: four letters followed by twelve digits. Official pages also describe the CNR as 16 alphanumeric characters, which is a wider phrase. [VERIFY: whether every live CNR, including High Court and Supreme Court CNRs, is four letters plus twelve digits, and whether those courts use the same state-district-establishment split.]

The character-by-character reading, and where the number hides on an order or a paper book, is [LINK: what-is-cnr-number].

District and taluka courts#

1. Copy the CNR from the case-history screen. Section 10.3.2 of the CIS 3.0 manual says the case details generated through Case Status display it. Orders and filing receipts often print it as well. Read it off the paper you have.
2. Open eCourts Services.
3. Paste the CNR with no spaces and no hyphens. ABCD000000002026 is a shape example, not a real CNR. Do not send it anywhere.
4. Press Search. The home-page instruction is: enter the 16-character alphanumeric CNR without a hyphen or a space, then view the current status and history.
5. Read the case history. The app help groups it as Case Details, Case Status, Hearing History and Orders, and the detail view also has the petitioner and advocate, the respondent and advocate, and the case history.

The district services portal tells you not to use the browser reload or back button. If the page goes blank, start again from the home page rather than stepping back.

High Courts#

Use High Court services and the same rule: 16 characters, no hyphen, no space. Then use Case Status if you are searching by anything other than the CNR. Some High Court case-number screens split Old Case Number and New Case Number. That split is on the case-number pages for several High Courts on this service, including screens titled for Andhra Pradesh, Madras, Kerala, Gujarat and Rajasthan. If the new number returns nothing, try the old number before you assume the matter is off the system.

The Supreme Court#

Use the CNR case-status page. The other Supreme Court searches, and what a diary number is doing before registration, sit in [LINK: supreme-court-case-status].

How do you search when you only have a case number or a filing number?#

Pick the court complex first, then the number, then the year that matches that number. A correct serial in the wrong year is an empty page.

On the eCourts Services app, a case-number search runs like this:

1. Select the court complex.
2. Select the case type.
3. Enter the case registration number.
4. Enter the case registration year.
5. Press Go, then open the case from the list.

A filing-number search on the same app asks for the court complex, the filing number and the case filing year. The web Case Status help on the district case-status page adds a captcha on the filing-number form, then a View button for the case history.

Write both numbers in the noting when the history shows both. The filing number is how you find a matter that has not been numbered yet. The registration number is how the cause list will print it later. [LINK: how-to-read-cause-list] is the note on item numbers and board abbreviations once you have the date.

High Court case-number search asks for the case type, the number and the year, and on many benches it asks you to choose the old series or the new series. The case-number help text on those screens says the number field takes a maximum of seven digits. If your number is longer than that, you are probably looking at a diary number, a filing number or a CNR, not the case serial.

How do you search eCourts by party name or advocate name?#

You can, and you should expect a list. Open the row that matches the court, the year and the case type. Then read the parties on the history page before you tell anyone the next date.

Party name#

The district web help, on the case-status page, gives these steps:

1. Enter the party name in full or in part. The minimum is three characters. For a name such as the help's own example, "Ramesh Narayan Yadav", the help says Ramesh, Narayan, Yadav, Ram or Nar will run.
2. The name may be the petitioner, plaintiff, complainant, respondent, defendant, appellant, accused or an extra party.
3. In the year box, enter the case registration year.
4. Choose Pending, Disposed, or Both. Choose Both when you do not know.
5. Enter the captcha and press Go.
6. Press View on the row you want, and read the case history.

The app help adds one step in front of those: select the court complex. Do that on the web form as well. A party search is scoped to the complex you picked. The right person in the wrong district is an empty list, or worse, a different person with the same name.

The High Court menu has Party Name as its own case-status tab. Use the same discipline: year, pending or disposed, then the history page.

Advocate name#

The app help offers three advocate searches:

• Advocate name, full or partial, minimum three characters.
• Bar registration number, in the form the help prints: MAH/XXXX/1982, where MAH stands for the state code, XXXX for the registration number and 1982 for the year. That is the help's pattern, not a real enrolment.
• A date-wise case list, which asks for the bar registration number and a date. That list is the advocate's board for the day. Reading the court's own cause list is [LINK: how-to-read-cause-list].

For the name and the bar-registration searches, choose Pending, Disposed or Both. The web help on the district case-status page matches this, and it calls the date option the advocate's cause list.

Advocate search is how a clerk rebuilds a board when the diary is incomplete. It is also how you pick up the wrong advocate. "Sharma" in a large court complex is not a search you can trust from the first row. Add the bar registration number when you have it, and still open the history.

The Supreme Court equivalent is advocate-on-record search, by AOR code, not by every advocate who addressed the court. That page is on sci.gov.in. Details are in [LINK: supreme-court-case-status].

What do the FIR, Act and case-type searches add?#

They sit on the same district Case Status menu, and on the High Court case-status menu. Use them when the CNR, the case number and the party name have failed, or when the only paper you hold is an FIR or a section.

FIR number. On the district web form: select the police station, enter the FIR number, enter the FIR year, choose Pending, Disposed or Both, complete the captcha, press Go, then View. The app asks you to select the court complex before the police station. This is the path for a criminal matter when the brief has the FIR and not the case number.

Act. Type a few letters of the Act, pick it from the list, and optionally type a section. Leave the section blank and the form lists every section of that Act in the court you selected. Choose Pending, Disposed or Both, then narrow by year and party.

Case type. Select the type, enter the case registration year, choose the status, and Go. Use it when you know the court had a batch of one type in one year and you need the serial.

These three recover a noting with a hole. They are a poor first search.

What should you copy out of the case history?#

Copy a fixed set of fields into the register or the matter note. The app help is the source for the section names: Case Details, Case Status, Hearing History, Orders, and the petitioner and respondent blocks with their advocates.

If the history shows a stage, copy those words. "For orders" and "for arguments" are different days of work. A disposed flag records what the portal shows. It does not say whether an appeal is open.

Orders on the portal are copies for information. When you need a certified copy for a brief or a filing, the portal PDF is the wrong document. What each kind of copy is good for is [LINK: download-court-orders-ecourts]. If you are about to rely on a summary of an order, the checks are in [LINK: summarise-court-order-ai].

A case-status page is the live docket of one matter. It is not a research database. Finding how courts have decided a question of law is a different job, on reported judgments. That split is [LINK: ai-legal-research-india].

Where do eCourts case status searches go wrong?#

Most empty searches are a wrong court, a wrong year, or a hyphen in the CNR. Work through the list before you tell the advocate the matter is not on the system.

Hyphens and spaces in the CNR. The district home page, the High Court home page and the app help all say the same thing: no hyphen, no space. A CNR printed as four groups on a cause list is still one 16-character string in the box.

The wrong site. District, High Court and Supreme Court do not share one search box. Start by naming the court in the noting, then open that court's site.

The wrong state, district or establishment. Anything except a CNR search is tied to the court complex you selected. The app help starts those searches with the complex. If the papers say the matter moved, the old complex will not show it. Search the complex it moved to, with status set to Both.

Transfer. Court staff move cases inside the Case Information System, including in bulk when a new court is created. The CIS 3.0 manual describes that staff function. It does not spell out what the public search shows the next morning. [VERIFY: whether a transferred case keeps its CNR, and whether the public history follows the case to the new establishment or stays on the old one until someone refreshes it.] Until that is confirmed, search both establishments by party name, with status Both, and compare the CNR on each history.

Registration year in a filing search, or the reverse. Case number uses the case registration year. Filing number uses the case filing year. If the matter was filed in December and numbered in January, those boxes are two different years.

Pending when the case is disposed, or the reverse. The help text says to choose Both when you do not know. Use Both the first time you look for an old matter.

A name shorter than three characters, or a name that is too common. The party and advocate helps set a three-character minimum. Three characters will run. They will also return a crowd. Add a year, then open View and read the parties.

The wrong case type. "Civil" and "criminal" are not case types. The form wants the court's own abbreviation. If you are guessing between two abbreviations, run both before you report a miss. On a High Court, try the old number series as well as the new one.

Several rows for one name. Match court, year, case type and the other party's name before you treat a row as the matter. If two rows still fit, stop and ask.

A stale next date. Portals lag the courtroom. A date updated at the board in the afternoon may not be on the public history yet. On the morning of a hearing, check the portal again and read the cause list. A weekly routine for a whole board of matters is [LINK: track-hearing-dates-chambers].

How do the SMS service and the eCourts Services app work?#

Both are run by the eCommittee of the Supreme Court, through the National Informatics Centre. Each one returns the status of the CNR you send.

SMS#

Section 10.7 of the CIS 3.0 manual says you get the status, when you have no internet, by sending an SMS in the form eCourts, then a space, then the CNR, to 9766899899. The eCourts homepage prints the same instruction as ECOURTS, a space, the CNR, to 9766899899. The eCommittee SMS Pull page names the same number and describes the service as sending the CNR to 9766899899. Its one-line "format" wording is shorter than the manual. [VERIFY: send a test from a known CNR before you publish the exact keyword the gateway accepts today, and confirm 9766899899 is still the live short code.]

Use a real CNR from a matter you are allowed to look up. Do not send the shape example from this article. The reply is a short status. It is not the order. If the reply and the portal disagree, the portal history and the order PDF are what you read next.

The mobile app#

The app is eCourts Services. The High Court services home page links the Android and iOS downloads. The help page is the app user guide. In Settings you choose High Court, District Court, or Both, and the app shows services for that choice.

From the guide, as of 8 October 2026:

• CNR search takes the 16 characters with no spaces or hyphens, and opens Case Details, Case Status, Hearing History and Orders.
• If you have no CNR, the same guide lists case number, filing number, party name, advocate name, FIR number and Act.
• The app can scan a case QR code. The CIS 3.0 manual, section 10.8, says the QR code can be taken from the eCourts site or the app and kept on the brief, so the next lookup does not depend on retyping the CNR.
• My Cases stores matters you mark. Refresh pulls the latest details for a saved case. Calendar view lists saved cases for a date you pick.
• Export and import move that saved list. They are a backup of what you stored on the phone, not a court record.

The Supreme Court distributes its own app from sci.gov.in. Use eCourts Services for district courts and High Courts. Saved cases go stale until someone presses Refresh, and the list holds only what was added. A routine for a whole board is [LINK: track-hearing-dates-chambers].

How do you check a CNR inside Scafffold?#

In Scafffold, eCourts case status is a question in the assistant. Paste the 16-character CNR and ask for the status, the next hearing date, the court, the parties, the advocates, the judges and the orders. The record it retrieves can include case type, status, court name, filing date, registration number, decision date, next hearing date, parties, advocates, judges, and the orders, interim and final, with the order text.

If you only have a party name or an advocate's name, ask for a search, read the CNR on the matching row, and look that CNR up before you report a date. Case detail is kept for up to 12 hours after it is fetched, so on the morning of a hearing confirm the next date on the portal. Read the order text before you rely on a summary of it. Match court, year, case type and parties, as you would on the website.

You can run the lookup from a Scafffold account.

Where the rest of this cluster goes#

This is the overview. The narrower notes are:

• [LINK: what-is-cnr-number]
• [LINK: how-to-read-cause-list]
• [LINK: download-court-orders-ecourts]
• [LINK: track-hearing-dates-chambers]
• [LINK: supreme-court-case-status]
• [LINK: summarise-court-order-ai]

Sources#

Pages and the manual below were checked on 8 October 2026. Screens change. If a step does not match the page in front of you, follow the page.

• eCourts Services, district and taluka courts: https://services.ecourts.gov.in/ecourtindia_v6/
• District Case Status, including the party, filing, advocate, FIR, Act and case-type help text: https://services.ecourts.gov.in/ecourtindia_v6/?p=casestatus/index
• eCourts Services app help: https://services.ecourts.gov.in/App/apphelp.html
• High Court services: https://hcservices.ecourts.gov.in/
• Supreme Court case status by CNR (diary number, case number, advocate-on-record, party name and court are separate pages on the same site): https://www.sci.gov.in/case-status-cnr-number/
• eCommittee, SMS Pull: https://ecommitteesci.gov.in/service/sms-pull/
• eCourts homepage, SMS format: https://ecourts.gov.in/ecourts2.0/
• eCommittee, Case Management through CIS 3.0, sections 10.3, 10.7 and 10.8 (CNR structure, SMS, QR code): https://ecourts.gov.in/ecourts_home/static/manuals/Case%20Management%20through%20CIS%203.0.pdf