How-To · Apex Court Remedies · Last verified October 2026

How to File a Curative Petition (2026)

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

A curative petition is the very last door in the Supreme Court. You reach it only after you have lost your case, lost the review of that judgment, and still believe the Court itself caused a gross injustice. It is not a third appeal and not a second review. It was created by the Court in 2002 to fix the rarest kind of error, such as a party never being heard or a judge who should not have sat on the case, and it is granted only in exceptional situations. This guide explains what a curative petition is, the narrow grounds on which it lies, what you must have done before you file one, how it is filed and certified, and how the Court decides it. It is general information, not legal advice. Last verified October 2026.

01What a curative petition is

A curative petition is a request to the Supreme Court to reconsider its own final judgment after a review petition against that judgment has already been dismissed. It is the last remedy available in the Indian legal system. There is nothing after it except, in a true constitutional sense, nothing at all.

The remedy does not come from any statute. The Supreme Court created it in Rupa Ashok Hurra v. Ashok Hurra (2002) 4 SCC 388, a judgment of a five-judge Constitution Bench. The Court held that even after a review is refused, it keeps an inherent power to reconsider its judgment to prevent abuse of its process or to cure a gross miscarriage of justice. That power is exercised through what came to be called a curative petition. The procedure was later set out in the Supreme Court Rules, 2013, under Order XLVIII.

Because it sits above review, which already sits above the main judgment, a curative petition is reserved for the rarest cases. The Court was clear that it should not become a routine further round of litigation.

02When it lies: the narrow grounds

The grounds are deliberately narrow. In Rupa Ashok Hurra, the Court gave two main examples of when the remedy can be invoked:

• Breach of natural justice. Where a party was not served or not heard at all, so the judgment was passed without giving that party a chance to put its case.
• Bias. Where a judge who decided the matter failed to disclose a connection with a party or the subject, raising a reasonable apprehension of bias.

Beyond these examples, the guiding test is the same: the petitioner must show a gross miscarriage of justice or an abuse of the process of the Court. A curative petition is not a chance to re-argue the facts, to add a point you forgot, or to say the Court simply got the law wrong. Disagreement with the result is not a ground. The error must be of the extreme kind that shakes the fairness of the decision itself.

A curative petition is not a third appeal. It exists to cure a gross injustice, not to reopen a case you lost on the merits.

03Before you file: review must be over

You cannot file a curative petition straight after losing your case. The remedy only opens once the earlier steps are exhausted:

• The Supreme Court must have delivered a final judgment or order against you.
• You must have filed a review petition against that judgment, and the review must have been dismissed, ordinarily by circulation (that is, decided by the judges in chambers without an oral hearing).
• The ground you now raise in the curative petition must have been taken in the review petition. You cannot raise for the first time, at the curative stage, a point you never put to the Court in review.

This sequence is strict. The curative petition must state clearly that these conditions are met, because the whole idea is a last correction after review has already failed.

04How to file, step by step

The broad steps, following Rupa Ashok Hurra and the Supreme Court Rules, 2013, are:

• Draft the curative petition setting out the final judgment, the review petition and its dismissal, and the specific curative ground (breach of natural justice, bias, or another gross miscarriage of justice).
• State that the grounds were raised in the review and that the review was dismissed by circulation. This statement is a required part of the petition.
• Obtain a senior advocate certificate. A senior advocate must certify that the petition meets the requirements laid down in Rupa Ashok Hurra, including that it is a fit case for a curative petition. Without this certification the petition is not in order.
• File it in the Supreme Court with the certified copies of the judgment and the review order, the court fee, and the usual annexures. A copy is served on the opposite party where the Rules require.
• The petition is first circulated to a Bench of the three senior-most judges and, as far as possible, the judges who passed the judgment complained of.

Confirm the current Rules, format and fee on the Supreme Court portal before filing, because the Rules are updated from time to time.

05How the Court decides it

A curative petition is normally decided by circulation, without an oral hearing. The Bench of the three senior-most judges, together with the judges who delivered the original judgment if available, considers it in chambers.

Only if a majority of that Bench concludes that the matter needs a hearing will the petition be listed, usually before the same Bench. If the judges are not persuaded that a curative ground is made out, the petition is simply dismissed. The Court also warned that if a curative petition is filed without merit, or to delay or harass, it may attract exemplary costs on the petitioner. So this is not a remedy to try on a slim chance.

06The honest limits

Be realistic. The curative petition is an exceptional remedy, and the great majority are dismissed at the circulation stage. It will not help if your real complaint is that the Court weighed the evidence differently from how you wanted, or applied the law in a way you disagree with. Those are not curative grounds.

It is also not a tool for delay. Because frivolous petitions can draw costs, a curative petition should be filed only where a genuine, serious injustice of the kind described in Rupa Ashok Hurra can be shown. Take advice from counsel who can honestly assess whether your facts clear that high bar before you spend time and money on it.

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.

Filing a curative petition is work for you and your senior counsel, and Claw does not draft or file it. Where Claw helps is in the research and tracking around it. Because a curative petition turns on how the Supreme Court has treated breaches of natural justice, bias, and the idea of a gross miscarriage of justice, its Legal GPT lets you research across 30 crore+ judgments, with Supreme Court decisions from 1950 and High Court decisions from 1990, to find how similar curative and review matters have been argued and decided. You can also track your matter through every appellate stage, the main judgment, the review, and the curative petition, across 9,102 courts, benches and forums, so a listing, an order or a dismissal does not slip past you. Results return in under 5 seconds, and Claw does not train its AI models on your documents. To check what other matters a party has on record, you can run a case search across Indian courts by name. A clean result means nothing was found on the forums and date searched, under the names used, not that no matter exists. This is general information, not legal advice.

08Sources and further reading

• Supreme Court of India (judgments and e-filing): main.sci.gov.in
• Supreme Court Rules, 2013 (procedure, Order XLVIII): sci.gov.in/rules
• India Code (statutes): indiacode.nic.in
• Claw: clawlaw.in

This guide is general information, not legal advice. A curative petition is an exceptional remedy; take advice from counsel on your own facts before filing.

09Frequently asked questions