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11 September 2026
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Court Scheduler- Case Management system

Every matter gets time, not just a date

Prateek Khandelwal

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About the Project

Indian High Courts list far more matters each day than a bench can hear. A Delhi High Court judge's advance list carries about fifty matters against roughly four and a half hours of argument time. Because listing is by item number alone, no advocate, litigant or judge knows when a particular matter will be reached. The consequences compound: advocates block out whole days for fifteen-minute hearings; adjournment requests arrive the evening before or by mentioning in the morning, wasting the preparation of the Bench and the other side; matters listed for final arguments are not reached, or are heard in fragments across months, destroying continuity; and the next date is set far out because every list is already full. A large share of those adjournments are avoidable. One of the major reason is usually clash, where a counsel wanted before two benches at the same hour, which nobody can prevent because nobody knows in advance who is appearing where.

Court Scheduler is a decision-support system for the Court's Registry. Three days before a hearing it asks every party on record four questions: what is this matter actually listed for; if it is ready to be argued, how long will you need; which counsel will argue it; and if you need more time, which dates over the next two months genuinely suit you. A constraint engine then builds each day's list from those answers, within the bench's real sitting capacity, and publishes not only a date for each matter but an estimated window of when it will be called. Matters not yet ready for argument never consume argument time and they go to a short-matters block, with the procedural directions drafted in advance from the parties' own proposed timelines.

Throughout, the system proposes and a person decides.

Practice Areas

Key Features

  • Three days before listing, every party on record is asked the stage of the matter, the argument time needed, the counsel who will argue, and up to five preferred dates. All parties are asked — not only the one seeking an adjournment
  • Matter not ready for argument never receives an argument slot. Matters for directions or completion of pleadings go to a separate short-matters block.
  • The arguing-counsel roster — confidential to the opposing party — lets the engine avoid placing the same advocate in two overlapping slots across benches.
  • Capacity-bounded lists 285 argument minutes and a 20-matter ceiling,
  • Estimated call times Each matter is published with a time window, not merely a date, so an advocate knows roughly when to appear

About the Creator

PK
Prateek Khandelwal