How-To · Litigation Process · Last verified October 2026

How to Seek an Adjournment in Court (2026)

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

Nobody plans to ask for an adjournment, but sometimes you must: a witness is unavailable, a document has not arrived, counsel is engaged elsewhere, or someone is ill. Courts do grant adjournments on sufficient cause, but the law and the judges are increasingly impatient with delay. There is a norm limiting how often you can ask, costs are routinely imposed, and an adjournment sought without good reason can hurt you, sometimes ending with your evidence closed. Asking well matters as much as asking at all. This guide explains the power to adjourn under the Code of Civil Procedure, the three-adjournment norm, costs, good and bad grounds, and what happens if an adjournment is refused. It is general information, not legal advice. Last verified October 2026.

01The short answer

To seek an adjournment, you (or your advocate) ask the court to put the hearing off to a later date and show sufficient cause for it. In civil cases the power is in Order 17 of the Code of Civil Procedure. You can make the request orally at the hearing or by a short written application, stating the reason and, where you can, offering the next date and undertaking to be ready.

Two things to expect: the court may grant it only on terms, including costs, and a proviso discourages repeated adjournments by providing that, ordinarily, a party should not get more than three adjournments during the hearing of a suit. Ask sparingly and honestly.

02The power to adjourn: Order 17

Order 17 of the Code of Civil Procedure governs adjournments in civil suits. In broad terms, the court may, if sufficient cause is shown at any stage, grant time to the parties or adjourn the hearing, and it records the reasons. The same rule allows the court to impose costs and to fix the next date.

The design of Order 17 reflects a balance: it lets a party who genuinely needs time have it, while giving the court tools, costs and the three-adjournment norm, to stop adjournments from being used to delay. Criminal matters are governed by the adjournment provisions of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, which likewise expect reasons and discourage needless delay, so confirm the provision that applies to your kind of case.

03The three-adjournment norm

A proviso to Order 17 Rule 1 provides that, ordinarily, no adjournment shall be granted more than three times to a party during the hearing of the suit. This is the rule people remember, and judges invoke it to refuse a fourth request.

The three-adjournment proviso is a strong norm, not an absolute bar. Courts can exceed it for a genuine, exceptional reason, but you should not count on it.

Courts have read this as a strong norm rather than an inflexible bar; in a genuinely exceptional case, on justifiable cause, a court may grant more. But the safe assumption is that you have a limited budget of adjournments, so do not spend them on avoidable problems. The point is to prevent a party from stalling a trial by repeatedly asking for time.

04Costs of an adjournment

Adjournments are not free. Order 17 allows the court to impose costs as a condition of granting time. Where the other side was ready and had, for example, produced its witnesses, the court can order the party seeking the adjournment to pay the costs occasioned, including the costs of witnesses who attended and had to be sent back.

These costs are meant to compensate the party who was ready and to discourage casual requests. Expect them to rise with each adjournment and with the inconvenience caused. Offering to pay reasonable costs, and to be ready on the next date, can make the difference between a request granted and one refused.

05Good grounds and bad grounds

Not every reason carries equal weight. Grounds courts generally accept include:

• Genuine illness of a party, witness, or counsel, supported where possible by a medical certificate.
• Unavoidable unavailability of a material witness or document, with an explanation of what is being done to produce it.
• Counsel genuinely engaged in another court, especially if intimated in advance.
• A sudden development that could not have been foreseen or prevented.

Grounds courts increasingly reject include lack of preparation, a casual request for more time, and repeated absence. A request that looks like a tactic to delay, or a fourth bite after three adjournments, is likely to be refused and may draw adverse comment. Keep requests specific, honest, and backed by what you have done to avoid needing them.

06If the adjournment is refused

A refusal can have real consequences. Under Order 17, if a party fails to appear or is not ready when the court declines further time, the court may proceed in their absence, decide the suit on the material before it, or close the party's right to lead the evidence they were meant to produce. In practice, that can mean your witnesses are not heard or your side of the case is shut out.

So treat each hearing date as the one that counts. If you truly cannot proceed, ask early, give the real reason, offer costs, and show you have tried to be ready. If an adjournment is wrongly refused and it causes injustice, the remedy lies in challenging the resulting order through the appropriate route, not in simply not turning up. Missing a date without leave is risky; see what happens if you miss a hearing.

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.

Asking for an adjournment and arguing sufficient cause are your advocate's job, and Claw does not appear for you. Where Claw helps is in making sure adjournments are the exception, not the routine, because you never miss a date. Claw tracks the matter across 9,102 courts, benches and forums with hearing and order alerts, so you know the next date well in advance and can prepare rather than scramble for time. Its Legal GPT lets you research across 30 crore+ judgments, with Supreme Court decisions from 1950 and High Court decisions from 1990, so you can see how courts have treated sufficient cause and the three-adjournment norm. You can run a case search across Indian courts by party or advocate to confirm a matter's next date and stage. Results return in under 5 seconds, and Claw does not train its AI models on your documents. 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

• India Code (Code of Civil Procedure, 1908; BNSS, 2023): indiacode.nic.in
• eCourts (case status and next dates): ecourts.gov.in
• National Judicial Data Grid (pendency and delay data): njdg.ecourts.gov.in
• Claw: clawlaw.in

This guide is general information, not legal advice. The grant of an adjournment, costs, and consequences depend on your facts and the court's discretion; confirm the current position and take advice before acting.

09Frequently asked questions