Well Argued · Courtroom Craft

Handling an adjournment wisely: a working advocate's guide

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

Adjournments are the part of court life no one teaches and everyone misjudges. A young advocate seeks one out of anxiety and annoys a bench that was ready to hear them. A careless one lets the other side string a matter out for years. And a court, weary of delay, refuses the one adjournment that a party genuinely needed to do justice. The adjournment is a small procedural moment that carries real strategic and ethical weight. Indian courts have tightened the discretion sharply, because delay has become the system's defining problem. Order 17 of the Code of Civil Procedure now limits adjournments and attaches costs, and the criminal courts are under standing directions to avoid them. This guide sets out, for 2026, when to ask for an adjournment, how to ask so the court grants it, when to resist one, and the mistakes that cost either way. It is a practice note, not legal advice.

01Why courts have turned against adjournments

For decades, the routine adjournment was the quiet engine of pendency in Indian courts. A matter listed for evidence would be put off because a witness was not ready; the next date would go because counsel was engaged elsewhere; months would pass between effective hearings. The cumulative effect, multiplied across millions of matters, is the backlog that defines the system. Judges know this better than anyone, and the mood on the bench has hardened accordingly.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly deprecated the culture of adjournments and pressed trial courts to hear matters continuously. In the discipline that followed cases on judicial accountability and timely process, such as the directions in Vineet Narain v. Union of India (1998) on how institutions must do their work without drift, the broader theme is clear: the court's time is a public resource, and an adjournment spends it. An advocate who treats adjournments as free is working from an outdated picture of the courtroom.

02What the rules now allow

On the civil side, Order 17 Rule 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure, as amended, provides that the court may grant time and adjourn a hearing for reasons to be recorded, but ordinarily not more than three adjournments to a party during the hearing of the suit. The rules also empower the court to impose costs for an adjournment, including the costs occasioned to the other side, and to proceed with the matter where a party seeks delay without sufficient cause. The discretion survives, but it is now a guarded, cost-bearing discretion, not a formality.

On the criminal side, the statutory scheme likewise presses for expeditious hearing and discourages needless postponement, and the courts have issued standing directions against the routine adjournment of trials and the deferral of cross-examination. The practical lesson across both is the same: an adjournment must be justified by a real and recorded reason, and the burden is on the party seeking it.

03When an adjournment is the right move

There are sound reasons to seek time, and a good advocate distinguishes them sharply from anxiety or convenience. A genuine need arises when a material witness is unavoidably absent, when a document essential to the hearing has not yet come on record despite diligence, when the other side has sprung something that fairness requires time to meet, or when counsel has had no real opportunity to prepare because the brief came impossibly late. In each, the adjournment serves justice, which is the only basis a court will respect.

Equally, an advocate must know when not to ask. If you are ready enough to argue, argue, because a bench inclined in your favour today may be differently constituted or differently minded on the next date. Seeking time out of a wish to over-prepare, or to put off a hearing you expect to lose, usually backfires: it irritates the court, invites costs, and surrenders the momentum. The question to ask yourself is whether the adjournment is for the case or for your comfort.

04How to ask so the court grants it

When you must seek time, ask well. Rise early, before the matter is taken up in full, and state the request briefly and candidly: the specific reason, why it could not be helped, and the short, definite time you need. Offer to make it conditional, such as accepting costs or agreeing that it is the last adjournment, because a court granting time wants assurance it will not recur. Never dress up a convenience as an emergency; a bench that catches the exaggeration will refuse this request and distrust the next.

Candour is the whole of it. A court will often grant a frankly explained genuine request and refuse a padded one, even for the same underlying reason, because the first respects the bench and the second insults it.

05Resisting the other sides adjournment

When the other side seeks time to delay, resisting it can be decisive, especially where delay itself serves their case, as it often does for a party in possession or a party benefiting from an interim position. Oppose the adjournment on the record: point to the history of adjournments already taken, the absence of a real reason, the prejudice your client suffers from further delay, and the court's own concern with expeditious disposal.

Where the other side repeatedly seeks time to keep a witness from the stand, press for the consequence the rules allow, such as closing the right to adjourn or proceeding with the evidence. If the delay is being used to wear down a witness or to defer an inconvenient cross, say so plainly, because a court protecting its process will act. The same alertness to tactics that serve delay is part of handling a hostile witness, where timing and control of the stand matter as much as the questions.

06The ethics of delay

There is a line between using the procedure the law provides and abusing it to deny the other side a timely hearing. An advocate owes a duty to the client, but also a duty to the court and to the administration of justice, and seeking adjournments to frustrate a legitimate claim, to exhaust an underfunded opponent, or simply to defer an unwelcome result crosses from advocacy into abuse of process. Courts increasingly record such conduct and visit it with costs.

The honest position is straightforward. Ask for time when justice needs it, and never when the only purpose is delay. Resist the other side's delay firmly, but do not oppose a genuine request out of mere tactical advantage, because a court remembers both the lawyer who wastes its time and the one who is fair when fairness costs them something. Over a career, being known as an advocate the bench can trust on this is worth far more than any single date saved or spent.

07Common mistakes with adjournments

The most common mistake is seeking an adjournment out of nerves when you are, in truth, ready to argue, surrendering a hearing the bench was willing to give you. The second is the padded reason, which a bench sees through and which poisons your standing. The third is treating the adjournment as an entitlement rather than a discretion to be earned, which reads as disrespect for the court's time.

On the other side, failing to resist the opponent's delay, and letting a matter drift when delay serves them, is a quiet dereliction toward your own client. So is forgetting that repeated adjournments now carry costs and can lead the court to proceed without you. And the gravest is using the process to delay for its own sake, which courts are now quick to penalise and slow to forget.

Handled well, the adjournment is simply another point at which an advocate shows judgement: asking for time only when the case needs it, asking candidly, resisting delay firmly, and never confusing the client's interest with the mere passage of time. That judgement, exercised consistently, is part of what builds a reputation on the bench.

08About Well Argued

Well Argued is a free, curated publication by Claw that gives an advocate a hard-won court victory an audience, turning a winning judgement into a short, well-told story that Claw shares across its social channels, its website and the AI answer engines. A matter where an advocate resisted a tactical delay and forced a fair, timely hearing, or secured the brief adjournment that justice genuinely required, is part of the quiet craft the profession is better for seeing. If such a matter of yours turned on this judgement, consider sending Well Argued the judgment; the editors decide whether there is a story and shape it faithfully.

09Frequently asked questions