India Court RTI Access Report 2026

Which courts let you file an RTI online, which run one portal for the High Court and district courts together, and which accept online certified-copy applications — the Supreme Court and all 25 High Courts mapped, 25 re-verified on official pages in July 2026.

Executive summary

State government RTI portals get all the attention — but India's judiciary runs its own, parallel RTI infrastructure, and nobody has mapped it. In July 2026, FileMyRTI mapped the RTI filing route and the certified-copy route for the Supreme Court and every High Court in India — all 26 courts mapped, 25 re-verified on each court's own official pages on 16 July 2026 (the Bombay High Court's website was unreachable in our verification window; its row retains earlier published information and is flagged for rechecking). The headline: 17 of 26 top courts now accept RTI applications online through their own judicial portals — a quiet digitisation story that changes how litigants and citizens should approach court records.

First, the boundary every citizen should know

Finding 1 - The judiciary's quiet e-RTI wave

17 of the 26 top courts now accept RTI applications online through dedicated judicial portals — from the Supreme Court's rti.sci.gov.in (with online first appeals) to dedicated portals in Telangana, Kerala, Rajasthan, Patna, Uttarakhand and a dozen more. This is separate from, and often better-built than, the state government portals: several accept online payment end-to-end and issue trackable registration numbers.

Finding 2 - Courts that run ONE portal for the entire state judiciary

Telangana, Allahabad (UP), Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madras (Tamil Nadu) and Uttarakhand accept RTI applications for the High Court and the district/subordinate courts of the state through a single portal, per the courts' own portals and published accounts (Gujarat's covers District and Taluka Courts, Family Courts, Industrial/Labour Courts and Ahmedabad city courts). Patna's e-Certified Copy Rules 2026 are reported to extend to district courts, but its RTI portal describes filing to the High Court — the dataset marks it unverified. For a litigant in a district town, a single portal is the difference between a postal application to a court registry and a five-minute online filing — and almost nobody knows these portals exist.

Finding 3 - Certified copies are digitising even faster

7 courts now accept online certified-copy applications or provide online copy-service access: Delhi's e-True Copy portal, Madhya Pradesh's e-Certified Copy (including district courts), Patna's e-Certified Copy system, Jharkhand's OCC, Karnataka's and Kerala's cconline, and Punjab & Haryana's online copy application. Bombay's online appointment booking is recorded separately as partial (its site was unreachable at verification). Notably, Karnataka and Jharkhand accept certified-copy applications online while their RTI route remains postal — proof that the copy process and RTI are genuinely separate systems.

Finding 4 - Fees vary court by court

Each High Court frames its own RTI rules, including the fee. Among verified published amounts, application fees range from Rs. 10 to Rs. 50: Rs. 10 at most courts (Punjab & Haryana publishes it directly), Rs. 12 under Chhattisgarh's rules, Rs. 50 under Allahabad's, and Madras applies its own distinctive cost structure under its amended rules. All fee figures in the dataset are as reported by the courts' rules and pages — confirm the current amount on the court's portal or rules at filing.

The court-by-court table

Methodology & honest limitations

• All 26 courts were mapped; 25 were re-verified on the courts' own official pages on 2026-07-16 (HTTP-checked portal URLs; rules and coverage read from the courts' published pages). The Bombay High Court's site was unreachable in the verification window - its row retains earlier published information and is flagged for rechecking.
• Where a claim could not be confirmed on an official page, the dataset says "unverified" rather than counting it - district-court portal coverage for Patna, and Bombay's copy-service status, are recorded this way.
• Fees are reported figures from each court's rules or pages as available at verification — they are a basis for comparison, not a quote. Confirm the current fee on the court's portal or rules before paying.
• "RTI online = No" means we found no dedicated online RTI filing route on the court's official pages at verification; postal/physical applications under the court's RTI rules remain available everywhere.
• This report covers the constitutional courts' own RTI infrastructure. For state government departments, see our India RTI Portal Usability Report 2026.

What to do with this (the practical part)

• Need a judgment or order? Check judgments.ecourts.gov.in free before applying for anything.
• Need a certified copy? Use the court's copy process — online where the table says so. Full route map: court case records in India.
• Copy application stuck? RTI for the registry trail: certified copy delayed.
• Record missing or inspection refused? The record-trail guide and old records not traceable.
• Want it drafted for you? Apply or book a guided session (Rs. 499).

Published by FileMyRTI — 50,000+ RTIs filed since 2014. All 26 courts mapped; 25 re-verified on official pages 2026-07-16 (Bombay flagged for rechecking). Reviewed content: the underlying court-records guides carry in-person review by Adv. Syed Musab Rahim Hashmi. Reuse permitted with attribution and a link.