How to Find Pending Litigation for M&A Due Diligence in India
A practical guide to finding a target company’s pending litigation in India before a deal closes: which forums to search, how to confirm a case is genuinely live, and how to keep the picture current until signing.
How-To Guide · M&A Due Diligence
When a buyer prices an M&A deal, a case the target lost five years ago and already paid off is mostly a footnote. What actually changes price, indemnities, or the decision to proceed is what is pending right now: a live suit, an injunction still in force, an insolvency application filed last week. Finding that pending litigation is harder than it sounds, because Indian court and tribunal data is scattered, updates at different speeds, and a case that looks closed on one portal can still be open on another. This guide walks through exactly how to find a target company’s pending litigation for M&A due diligence in India: where to search, how to confirm a case is genuinely live, and how to keep that picture current up to the day you close.
- Pending, not historical: for M&A pricing and deal terms, what matters is what is still open, not what has already been decided or settled.
- Search beyond the registered office: Supreme Court, every relevant High Court, NCLT and NCLAT, DRT, consumer forums (via e-Jagriti), and district courts.
- Confirm status, do not assume it: use the CNR number where available, and check whether an interim order is still in force, not just the case status label.
- Refresh the search before closing: NCLT and DRT status can change within days, so a bring-down search close to closing is essential.
- Record what was searched and when: a plain search log protects the deal team if something surfaces after closing.
01Why "pending" is the word that matters
In M&A due diligence, a litigation search that only tells you what a company has been involved in is not enough. What decides deal terms is whether a matter is still open, because an open matter can still produce a payment, an injunction, or a change in ownership after the deal closes. A closed case, however large, is usually already reflected in the target’s accounts or settlement history.
Pending status changes faster than most due diligence timelines
A search run at the start of a due diligence exercise can be out of date by the time the deal signs, and further out of date by the time it closes. This matters most at fast-moving forums. An insolvency application at the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) can be filed and admitted within days, turning a company that looked financially sound into one facing a resolution process. A stay order can be vacated. A settlement can be reached and a case withdrawn. Treating a litigation search as a one-time snapshot is the single most common mistake in this exercise.
Disclosure alone will not surface everything
Targets are usually asked to list pending litigation above a value threshold. In practice, cases in the name of a subsidiary, a promoter, or an old trade name are often left out, not always deliberately. A case that management genuinely considers minor, such as a consumer complaint or a labour claim, may still matter to a buyer who is about to take on the business as it stands. Independent search is what closes that gap.
Indian records do not talk to each other
A company can have live matters at the Supreme Court, a High Court, the NCLT, a Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT), a consumer commission, and a district court, all at the same time. Each forum runs its own portal, its own case-status format, and its own update schedule. There is no single national database that shows every pending case against a party. Building the pending litigation picture means visiting several different systems and reconciling what they show.
This guide is narrower than a full due diligence playbook
This page focuses specifically on the search and verification steps for pending litigation in an M&A context. For the full six-step litigation due diligence process, including promoter checks, regulatory records, and reporting formats, see our companion guide to litigation due diligence.
02What counts as pending litigation in a deal
Before searching, be clear on what "pending" should include for a deal. It is broader than just civil suits.
A litigation search for M&A is not a history lesson. It is a check on what could still happen to the business after you own it.
- Civil suits and commercial disputes: claims for money, breach of contract, or property, at any stage from filing to final arguments.
- Writ petitions and appeals: matters challenging a government or regulatory action, including appeals from a lower forum that are still open.
- Insolvency and company law petitions: applications at the NCLT, including ones filed but not yet admitted. An unadmitted petition still signals creditor pressure.
- Injunctions and stay orders currently in force: even a small underlying claim can carry real operational risk if it comes with an active order restraining the business.
- Arbitration references: largely private and not visible on court portals, so these depend on the target’s own disclosure and any related court filings (for interim relief or enforcement) that may be public.
- Regulatory show-cause notices and pending adjudications: not technically "litigation" in the court sense, but functionally the same risk, since an adjudication can turn into a penalty or a licence issue.
03Step 1: Fix the entity list first
Every search below only works if you search the right names. Before opening a single portal, list the target company (current and any prior name), its subsidiaries and step-down subsidiaries, associate entities, and the promoters and directors who could be personally named. Get this list confirmed in writing against the target’s MCA filings and its audited financial statements, since the two do not always agree on the group structure.
Sector matters here too. Some industries generate a much higher volume of pending matters as a matter of course. A pharmaceutical company, for example, typically carries far more live cases across consumer forums, regulatory tribunals, and labour courts than a comparable business in another sector, simply because of the nature of its products and its compliance exposure. If the target is a pharma company, see litigation management for pharma companies for what that volume usually looks like and why it needs a different search approach.
04Step 2: Search the courts and tribunals where pending cases actually sit
Search every forum relevant to the target’s operations, not just the state where it is incorporated. Here is where pending matters are most likely to be found and how to search each.
Supreme Court of India
The eSCR portal and the main case-status search on sci.gov.in let you search by party name for pending special leave petitions, writ petitions, and appeals. Search the exact registered name and common short forms.
High Courts
Each of India’s 25 High Courts runs its own case-status portal. Search every High Court where the target has a registered office, a factory, a branch, or a history of contracts, not only the state of incorporation. A company can be a defendant in a High Court far from where it is headquartered, over a single disputed contract or property.
NCLT and NCLAT
The National Company Law Tribunal sits at benches across the country and is where insolvency applications, oppression and mismanagement petitions, and winding-up matters are filed. This is the forum where pending status changes fastest, so run this search as close to signing and closing as you can. The NCLAT hears appeals from NCLT orders and is worth checking separately for matters already in appeal. The IBBI also publishes public announcements of admitted insolvency processes (CIRP), which is a useful cross-check against NCLT filings, though it lists announcements rather than offering a full name-search tool.
Debt Recovery Tribunals (DRT)
If the target has borrowed from banks or financial institutions, check the relevant DRT. A pending Original Application at a DRT means a lender has already begun formal recovery proceedings, which is a stronger signal of financial stress than a payment default alone.
Consumer forums (via e-Jagriti)
Consumer complaints against B2C businesses are searched through e-Jagriti, the portal that now hosts party-name search across district, state, and national consumer commissions. This replaced the older Confonet system, so make sure you are searching the current portal rather than a legacy link.
District courts, tax tribunals, and GSTAT
The e-Courts portal covers a large number of district and civil courts and is worth searching for property, contract, and labour matters that are often missed. For tax exposure, the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal and the GST Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT, now operational with filing through its own e-filing portal) show pending disputes that are frequently among the largest contingent liabilities on a target’s books.
05Step 3: Confirm the case is actually pending, not disposed
A name search returning a case is only the first half of the job. The second half is confirming its current status, because court records list old and closed matters alongside live ones, and the labels used are not always intuitive.
Use the CNR number to pull the authoritative record
Where a Case Number Record (CNR) number is available, use it. The CNR pulls the case’s full status directly rather than relying on a name-match result, which reduces the risk of confusing two similarly named parties.
Read the status field carefully
"Pending" and "disposed" are not the only two states you will see. A case can show as "reserved for orders" (argued but not yet decided), "part-heard," or "stayed", each of which still counts as live for due diligence purposes even though it is not moving toward a hearing in the immediate term. Do not treat anything short of a clear "disposed" as closed.
Check whether an interim order is still in force
A case can be technically pending but functionally dormant, or it can be pending with an active injunction that restricts the target’s operations right now. Read the latest order, not just the case status label, to know which situation you are in.
Check the next date of hearing
A near-term hearing date suggests the matter is actively moving. A case with no listed date for a long stretch may be dormant, but confirm this rather than assume it, since some forums do not always show a scheduled date even for a live matter.
06Step 4: Keep the search live until closing
A litigation search done once, at the start of due diligence, is a snapshot. Deals can take weeks or months to move from signing to closing, and a company’s pending litigation picture can change materially in that window.
Build in a bring-down search: repeat the key searches, especially NCLT, DRT, and any High Court matter flagged as material, a few days before closing. This catches anything filed, admitted, or newly ordered since the original search. For deals with a longer signing-to-closing gap, it is worth monitoring cause lists on an ongoing basis rather than waiting until the very end, so a new filing or an adverse order does not surface for the first time at closing.
This is what a litigation tracker is built for: software that watches live cases across courts and alerts you when a status changes, instead of requiring someone to manually recheck each portal. If you want to understand exactly what this category of tool does and what to look for, see what a litigation tracker is.
07Step 5: Record findings the deal team can use
A list of case names is not a usable output. For each pending matter, record the forum, the case number or CNR, the parties, the nature of the claim, the current stage, the next date, whether any interim order is in force, and an estimate of financial exposure where one can be made. Flag anything that looks deal-relevant on its own, an active NCLT petition, an undisclosed decree, or a fresh injunction, for immediate escalation rather than holding it for a final report.
Deal teams running several due diligence workstreams at once, alongside advisors and outside counsel, often already use a general practice or case management tool to keep everyone’s workflow organised. If your team is evaluating one built for how Indian courts and litigation actually work, rather than a system designed primarily for other markets, see the best PracticePanther alternatives for India.
Keep a plain record of every forum searched, every entity searched, and the date of the search. This is what lets the deal team, and later an auditor or a court, see exactly what was covered and when, which matters if a dispute turns up after closing that was genuinely not visible at the time you searched.
08Where 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. For finding and confirming pending litigation in M&A due diligence, two parts of that are directly relevant.
For the court search itself, Claw’s case search covers 30 crore-plus judgements and case records across 25 High Courts (1980 to 2026) and the Supreme Court (1950 to 2026), with AI-based and semantic search returning results in under 5 seconds. A due diligence team can search a target entity, its subsidiaries, and its promoters by name across all these courts from one place, with name-tolerant matching that helps when a company or a person’s name is spelled differently across different court records, rather than opening each High Court portal in turn.
For the bring-down and monitoring step, Claw’s case tracking covers 8,200-plus courts, including district courts, tribunals, and the Supreme Court, with automatic status updates and alerts by WhatsApp and email when an order is passed or a matter is newly listed. A due diligence team can add flagged matters to a tracker at the start of the exercise and get notified of any change right up to closing, instead of manually re-running searches by hand.
Claw’s coverage does not replace regulatory and statutory checks such as MCA filings, SEBI orders, or IBBI announcements, which still need to be searched directly on those portals as part of a complete due diligence exercise.
09Frequently asked questions
How do I find pending litigation against a company for M&A due diligence in India?
Search the company, its subsidiaries, and its promoters by name across the Supreme Court, every High Court relevant to its operations, the NCLT and NCLAT, DRTs if it has bank borrowings, consumer forums through e-Jagriti, and district courts through the e-Courts portal. Confirm each result’s current status using the CNR number where available, since a name search alone does not tell you whether a case is still live.
Which courts should I prioritise when time is limited?
Start with the NCLT, because insolvency status can change fastest and is the most deal-relevant finding, followed by any High Court where the target has known operations or has previously litigated. Then move to DRTs if there is significant bank debt, and consumer forums for B2C businesses. District courts and tax tribunals should still be covered, but they change status more slowly than NCLT and DRT matters.
How close to closing should I re-run the litigation search?
Run a bring-down search a few days before closing, focused on NCLT, DRT, and any matter already flagged as material. For deals with a long gap between signing and closing, monitor cause lists on an ongoing basis rather than waiting until the end, so a new filing or an adverse order does not surface for the first time at closing.
How do I know if a case is truly pending and not already disposed?
Read the actual status field on the court portal rather than assuming from the case appearing in search results. Labels like "reserved for orders," "part-heard," or "stayed" all still count as pending for due diligence purposes. Where a CNR number is available, use it to pull the authoritative record, and check the latest order to see whether any interim relief is still in force.
Can I rely on the target company's own disclosure of pending litigation?
Not on its own. Targets are usually asked to disclose litigation above a materiality threshold, and cases involving subsidiaries, old trade names, or promoters personally are often left out, not always deliberately. Independent search across courts and tribunals is what closes that gap, and any case found that was not disclosed is itself a due diligence finding worth flagging.
Does arbitration show up in a court-record search?
Not directly. Arbitration proceedings are private, so they generally will not appear in a court portal search unless a party has gone to court for interim relief or to enforce or challenge an award. For arbitration exposure, you largely depend on the target’s own disclosure, supplemented by any related court filings that are public.