Case Search at the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT)

Jurisdiction Guide · Armed Forces Tribunal

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

A lawyer or a defence personnel representing an officer, jawan, or veteran in a service matter has to first work out which of eleven Armed Forces Tribunal benches is hearing the case, then use that bench’s own search page, since there is no single national portal that covers all of them. This guide explains how the AFT is structured, how its cases are numbered, where to check case status online, and what to do when a matter does not show up where you expect it.

01What the Armed Forces Tribunal handles

The Armed Forces Tribunal was set up under the Armed Forces Tribunal Act, 2007 to hear service related disputes and complaints of officers and personnel of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and appeals arising out of orders of court martial. Before the AFT existed, most of these matters went to the High Courts under writ jurisdiction. The Act moved this category of litigation to a dedicated tribunal.

Matters commonly heard at the AFT include disputes over commission, promotion, seniority, and postings, pay and pension claims, disability and family pension matters, discharge and dismissal from service, and appeals against the findings or sentence of a court martial. Because the parties are almost always serving or retired defence personnel on one side and the Ministry of Defence or a service headquarters on the other, the case load is specialised and the volume is significant.

02The Principal Bench and ten Regional Benches

The AFT sits at a Principal Bench in New Delhi and ten Regional Benches: Chandigarh, Lucknow, Kolkata, Guwahati, Chennai, Kochi, Mumbai, Jabalpur, Jaipur, and Jammu (which also serves Srinagar). The Chandigarh and Lucknow Regional Benches each have three courts, because of the volume of matters in those regions. The other locations have a single bench. Every bench is made up of one Judicial Member and one Administrative Member, sitting together.

Each bench has its own territorial jurisdiction, broadly tied to where the applicant is posted, was last posted, or resides, similar in spirit to how a High Court has territorial jurisdiction over a state. This is the first thing to establish before you search for a case: which bench is actually hearing it. Getting this wrong is the single most common reason an AFT case search returns nothing.

Before you search for an AFT case, you need to know which of eleven benches is hearing it. There is no single search that covers all of them at once.

03How AFT cases are numbered

AFT matters are filed as applications, not suits or petitions, and the application type tells you what kind of matter it is.

• OA (Original Application): the main case type at the AFT, used for most service disputes filed directly before the tribunal. A typical citation looks like “OA 783 of 2025”.
• TA (Transfer Application): used for matters transferred to the AFT, including service matters that were pending in a High Court before the AFT Act came into force or since.
• MA (Miscellaneous Application): interlocutory applications filed within a main OA or TA, for example for interim relief or condonation of delay.
• RA (Review Application): filed to seek review of a final order passed by the tribunal.

Unlike some tribunals, an AFT case number does not carry a bench code built into it the same way an NCLT number does. This means the same application number and year can exist at more than one bench for entirely different cases. You need the bench name, the case type, the number, and the year together to identify a case with certainty. A diary number, assigned when the application is first lodged at the registry, is different from the OA number assigned after registration, so keep both if you have them.

04How to check AFT case status online

There are two layers of official portals for AFT case status, and it helps to know both.

The central AFT portal

The tribunal maintains a case status page at aft.gov.in/case-status. Government service listings describe this kind of search as available by case number, diary number, party name (petitioner or respondent), judge, advocate, or subject. The AFT also publishes reportable judgements and daily orders through this portal.

Bench specific portals

Several benches also run their own websites in addition to, or alongside, the central portal. The Principal Bench in Delhi has historically used aftdelhi.nic.in, which includes its own case tracking search by title, case number, and cause list. The Chandigarh bench runs a case status page at its own site, and other Regional Benches such as Jaipur and Guwahati maintain separate NIC or dedicated websites as well. The practical result is that the exact page you need depends on which bench your matter is at, and the search interface is not identical across all of them.

The National Government Services Portal

The Government of India’s services portal also lists AFT case status as an online service and links through to the tribunal’s own search, at services.india.gov.in. This is a useful starting point if you are not sure which bench portal to use.

05Cause lists and hearing dates

Each bench publishes its own daily cause list, usually as a PDF the evening before the hearing date, listing the matters coming up and their serial order. There is no single, combined cause list across all eleven benches. If your firm or your matter portfolio spans more than one bench, for example a headquarters posting change moving a matter, or simply because you handle personnel from different commands, you have to check each relevant bench’s cause list separately.

This is the same underlying problem that comes up across most Indian courts and tribunals: cause lists are published per court, not centrally, and missing a listing because you checked the wrong bench is a real risk. For a general approach to handling this across multiple courts, see how to manage cause lists across multiple courts in India and how to automate cause list alerts.

06Common problems and workarounds

Practitioners who regularly appear before the AFT run into a fairly predictable set of search problems.

Case not showing up

The most common cause is searching the wrong bench. The next most common is a mismatch in the case type (OA vs TA vs MA) or the year. Party name search can also fail because of how service personnel are recorded: rank, full name, and service number are not always entered consistently, and a search on just the surname may miss the record or return too many results. Workaround: try the diary number if you have it, try both petitioner and respondent name fields, and confirm the bench with your instructing office or the registry directly.

Orders and judgements not uploaded

Reportable judgements are published on the AFT and bench portals, but coverage and upload speed vary by bench, similar to other tribunals. For a certified copy of a specific order, the registry of the bench concerned remains the reliable route. For broader legal research and citation of AFT rulings alongside other case law, a general legal research database is usually more complete than checking a single bench portal.

Tracking matters across benches

Law firms and in house defence establishment counsel handling multiple AFT matters, often for personnel posted at different commands, end up tracking hearing dates and status manually across several bench websites. This is the same fragmentation problem that shows up at other specialist tribunals. For comparison, see how case tracking software approaches this at the Debt Recovery Tribunal and DRAT, and for the wider picture of how search differs across Indian courts and tribunals, see case search across Indian courts.

07Where 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.

Claw’s AI based case search product covers judgements from the Supreme Court and the 25 High Courts, not tribunal databases like the AFT, so it is not the tool for searching AFT case law itself. Where Claw is relevant to AFT practice is on the tracking and management side. Its case management module covers 8,200 plus courts and tribunals across India, which includes AFT benches, so a firm or legal team handling defence service matters can track hearing dates, get automatic case update alerts over WhatsApp and email, and keep a single calendar across matters at different AFT benches instead of checking each bench portal by hand. Its AI auto-compliance feature can also read an uploaded AFT order and schedule the relevant follow up reminders automatically.

For AFT judgement research and citation work, the tribunal’s own portals and general legal research databases remain the primary sources. For staying on top of active AFT matters across benches without manual portal checks, Claw’s tracking and alerting capability is the part that applies.

08Frequently asked questions