Coverage Audit · Tribunals

Every Tribunal Bench Claw Covers: 13 Systems, Named (2026)

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

If you want to know whether a tribunal case can be searched by party name, the honest answer depends entirely on which tribunal you mean. India does not have one tribunal system, it has thirteen, each with its own benches, its own website, and its own rules on whether you can search by a party’s name at all. This page is a named audit, not a marketing claim: every tribunal system Claw covers, listed bench by bench, with the Claw-covered bench count for each one as of 14 September 2026 (159 benches in total across 13 systems, from Claw’s Court and Tribunal Coverage Directory), plus a straight answer on which systems support party-name search and which do not. These are the benches Claw covers, not the full official national totals, and coverage grows over time.

01Why tribunal coverage is confusing

A tribunal is not a court, but it decides real disputes with real deadlines, and for a lawyer or an in-house team, missing a hearing or a case update at a tribunal is just as costly as missing one at a High Court. The problem is that "tribunal coverage" is a vague phrase that can mean almost anything.

Thirteen different systems, thirteen different rules

NCLT hears company and insolvency matters. ITAT hears income tax appeals. GSTAT hears GST disputes. CESTAT hears customs and excise appeals. CAT hears central government service matters. Each of these runs on a different Act, a different bench structure, and a different online case-status system. A tool that says it "covers tribunals" without naming which ones, and how many benches of each, is not giving you an answer you can rely on.

Bench counts go stale fast

Tribunal benches are added, and occasionally renamed, by government notification. GSTAT is the clearest example: its state benches only started becoming operational in 2026, so any figure written before this year is close to useless. ITAT and CAT have also grown their bench count over time. A number that was correct two years ago may already be wrong.

02How this list was verified

Every bench count below is a Claw-covered figure, taken from Claw’s own Court and Tribunal Coverage Directory as of 14 September 2026. These are the benches whose case data Claw tracks, not the full official national totals for each system, which are larger. Where a system is still rolling out benches (GSTAT in particular, as more benches become operational through 2026), coverage is a dated snapshot that grows over time.

The total on this page, 159 benches across 13 systems, is the sum of the thirteen Claw-covered counts below, taken directly from the coverage register rather than estimated or rounded.

Thirteen tribunal systems, thirteen different rulebooks. The only honest way to state coverage is to name every bench Claw covers, not round it off.

03The 13 tribunal systems Claw covers, named bench by bench

The table below lists each tribunal system, the number of benches Claw covers (as of 14 September 2026), sample bench cities, whether party-name search works on it, and what it decides.

Sum of the thirteen Claw-covered counts above: 159 benches across 13 systems, as of 14 September 2026, taken from Claw’s Court and Tribunal Coverage Directory. These are the benches Claw covers, not the full official national totals, and coverage grows as new benches are brought in.

A full CSV of every named bench, city, and party-search status is available for download so you can check your own tribunal caseload against it directly.

04Which tribunals support party-name search

Party-name search means you can type a company, individual, or organisation’s name and find matters where they are a party, instead of needing an exact case number. Eleven of the thirteen systems above support this: NCLT, NCLAT, ITAT, GSTAT, CESTAT, CAT, CGIT, DRT, DRAT, SAT, and APTEL.

Two do not. TDSAT and IRCMS use other identifiers, such as case or appeal numbers, rather than party-name lookup. If your workflow depends on searching by a client or opposite-party name at these two forums, plan for that gap and track by case number instead.

For the two tax-specific tribunals in this table, ITAT and GSTAT (plus CESTAT), a fuller breakdown of how tax tribunal search works is covered separately in our tax tribunal coverage explainer. For NCLT and DRT specifically, including how insolvency and debt-recovery case tracking works day to day, see our guide to tribunal case tracking software.

05What this list does not cover

Being honest about limits is part of what makes a coverage claim trustworthy.

• No per-bench case counts. We do not state how many pending or disposed cases sit at any individual bench. That number changes daily and no external tool can verify it bench by bench with confidence.
• Circuit and additional sittings are not all named. Several systems, especially CAT and GSTAT, hold circuit sittings in smaller cities in addition to their main benches. This table names the main benches; it does not attempt to list every circuit sitting.
• This is a tribunal audit, not a court audit. Supreme Court and High Court coverage is a separate topic, covered in our full court and tribunal coverage register (9,102 courts, benches, and forums as of 14 September 2026).
• Coverage grows. These are Claw-covered counts as of 14 September 2026, not the full official national totals, and Claw adds benches over time (GSTAT in particular is still rolling out through 2026). Treat any figure on this page as a dated snapshot, and re-check for a major update after that.

06Where Claw fits

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.

On the tribunal side specifically, Claw’s case management and tracking coverage extends across the 159 benches named in the table above, as part of a register of 9,102 courts, benches, and forums (as of 14 September 2026) including all states, tribunals, and district courts, set out in full in the Claw court and tribunal coverage register. That means auto case updates, calendar sync, cause lists, and WhatsApp and email alerts work the same way whether the matter is at an NCLT bench in Ahmedabad or a DRT bench in Chennai. Party-name search works on the eleven tribunal systems above that support it at the source; for TDSAT and IRCMS, tracking follows the case or appeal number, matching how those two tribunals themselves work. Claw’s separate case-law search product covers 30 crore plus judgments from the Supreme Court (from 1950) and the 25 High Courts (from 1990), with results in under 5 seconds; the tribunal coverage in this table is about case tracking and management, not judgement research. Claw does not train on customer documents.

07Sources

The bench counts in the table above are Claw-covered figures from Claw’s Court and Tribunal Coverage Directory (as of 14 September 2026); each tribunal’s own official website, linked below, is the reference for its structure and case-status portal:

• NCLT: nclt.gov.in/benches
• NCLAT: nclat.nic.in
• ITAT: itat.gov.in
• GSTAT: gstat.gov.in
• CESTAT: cestat.gov.in/benches
• CAT: cgat.gov.in
• CGIT: cgit.labour.gov.in
• DRT / DRAT: financialservices.gov.in
• SAT: sat.gov.in
• APTEL: aptel.gov.in
• TDSAT: tdsat.gov.in
• IRCMS (Gujarat Revenue Tribunal): revenuetribunal.gujarat.gov.in
• Claw: clawlaw.in

Bench counts for GSTAT and CAT are the most likely to change during 2026 as new benches become operational. Recheck official sources before relying on this page for anything beyond editorial purposes.

08Frequently asked questions