Supreme Court Issued SOP Mandates 5-Page Cap on Written Submissions: Balancing Judicial Efficiency and the Right to Be Heard

Introduction

On December 29, 2025, the Supreme Court of India issued Circular No. F. No. 29/Judl./2025 introducing a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) governing the timelines for oral arguments and written submissions across all post-notice and regular hearing matters. Issued under the direct directions of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, the SOP mandates that all arguing counsel, including senior advocates, file a concise written submission or brief note of not more than five pages at least three days prior to the scheduled date of hearing, after serving a copy on the opposite side.[1] In parallel, all counsel are required to indicate, at least one day before the commencement of hearing, the time they propose to consume for oral arguments — such estimates to be submitted through the existing online portal for Appearance Slips accessible to Advocates-on-Record.

The SOP is anchored in the language of institutional efficiency: “In order to facilitate effective Court Management and equitable distribution of Court working hours and to ensure speedy and proper administration of justice, as directed by Hon’ble the Chief Justice of India and all the Hon’ble Judges, there shall be a Standard Operating Procedure for adhering to timelines for submission of oral arguments in all cases, with immediate effect.”[1] The measure is neither without precedent nor without controversy. It sits at the intersection of the Court’s undeniable crisis of docket congestion and the equally undeniable constitutional right of every litigant to be meaningfully heard.

The Docket Crisis: Scale and Urgency

The administrative pressure driving this reform is well documented. As of December 31, 2025, the Supreme Court of India had 92,101 pending cases — an 11.40 per cent increase in just three years.[2] Nationally, the judicial backlog stands at over 4.76 crore cases across district courts, High Courts, and the apex court combined.[2] The Supreme Court Observer has noted that the Court saw pendency rise from 82,445 cases in January 2025 to 90,694 by November 2025.[3]

In the months before the SOP was issued, Chief Justice Surya Kant had drawn attention to the human cost embedded in these statistics. On December 12, 2025, in what has been described as a Pre-SOP Briefing, the CJI spoke of a widow who had waited 23 years for railway accident compensation, calling it “absolutely unfair and unjustified” that bail applications and motor accident claims were being deferred because of “unending arguments” in high-profile matters.[4] He stressed that no section of the Bar could claim “privileged access” to judicial time and that “predictable timelines for case disposal” constituted his foremost administrative priority.

The Regulatory and Constitutional Framework

The SOP derives its constitutional legitimacy primarily from Article 145 of the Constitution of India, which grants the Supreme Court the power, with the approval of the President, to make rules for regulating generally the practice and procedure of the Court. Article 145(1)(b) specifically includes rules “as to the procedure for hearing appeals and other matters pertaining to appeals including the time within which appeals to the Court are to be entered.”[5] Crucially, the Constitution explicitly empowers the Court to prescribe time limits in matters of advocacy and procedure — the SOP is therefore not an executive imposition but an expression of the Court’s own constitutionally granted house-keeping authority.

The Supreme Court Rules, 2013, framed under Article 145 with the approval of the President, provide the detailed procedural architecture within which the SOP operates. Notified on May 27, 2014, these Rules govern the filing, registration, listing, and hearing of cases, including the conduct of advocates before the Court.[6] Order XIII of the Rules deals broadly with written submissions and their filing obligations, creating the foundational structure upon which the Court’s December 2025 circular layered a specific brevity requirement.

The SOP is also consistent with a broader reading of Article 136 and Article 141 of the Constitution, the former conferring discretionary appellate jurisdiction on the Supreme Court over all courts and tribunals in India, and the latter making the Court’s declarations of law binding on all courts within the territory of India. Both provisions contemplate a Supreme Court that exercises informed, prepared, and efficient adjudication — objectives that are directly served by structured written submissions filed in advance.

Judicial Precedents on Procedural Reform and Access to Hearing

The tension between procedural discipline and substantive hearing rights is not new to Indian jurisprudence. In Salem Advocate Bar Association (II) v. Union of India, (2005) 6 SCC 344, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of CPC amendments introducing time limits and case management obligations, recognising that “procedural changes aimed at reducing the length of proceedings are constitutionally valid” and that judges must take a lead role in the lifecycle of litigation rather than leaving its pace to the parties.[7] The Court in that case identified structured procedural discipline as “essential to expeditious justice,” a formulation that the India Legal Live commentary on the December 2025 SOP cited directly as lending judicial lineage to the five-page cap.[8]

On the other side of the ledger sits Hussainara Khatoon & Ors. v. Home Secretary, State of Bihar, AIR 1979 SC 1369; (1980) 1 SCC 98, where Justice P.N. Bhagwati held that “speedy trial is of the essence of criminal justice and there can be no doubt that delay in trial by itself constitutes a denial of justice.”[9] The Court read the right to a speedy and fair trial into Article 21, holding that “the procedure under which a person may be deprived of his life or liberty should be ‘reasonable fair and just.’”[9] While Hussainara Khatoon addressed undertrial prisoners rather than appellate procedure, its foundational logic — that procedural failures constitute substantive fundamental rights violations — supplies the constitutional basis for arguing that constricting a party’s ability to fully present its case risks falling foul of Article 21.

The Supreme Court’s own treatment of Article 14 (right to equality), Article 21 (right to life and personal liberty), and the principles of natural justice — including the audi alteram partem rule — requires that parties be given a meaningful opportunity to be heard. The question raised by the five-page cap is whether it impairs, rather than structures, that opportunity. As Live Law noted in its analysis of the SOP, “the SOP stops short of dictating how long counsel may argue.”[4] What it does impose is a cap on the written note that precedes oral arguments — a distinction that may matter for complex constitutional or multi-party litigation where the core submissions themselves can run substantially beyond five pages.

Mechanics of the SOP: What the Circular Actually Requires

The Circular (F. No. 29/Judl./2025) dated December 29, 2025 introduces three interlocking obligations that together are designed to instil predictability in the Court’s working day. First, Senior Advocates, arguing counsel, and/or the Advocate-on-Record must submit, through the Court’s existing online Appearance Slip portal, their proposed timelines for oral arguments at least one day before the commencement of hearing. Second, and more controversially, the following direction governs written submissions verbatim from the Circular: “Arguing counsel and/or Senior Advocates, through their Advocate-on-record or Nodal Counsel/s nominated by Hon’ble Court, if any, shall file a brief Note / written submission not exceeding five (5) pages, after serving its copy on the other side, at least three (3) days prior to the date of hearing, in order to ensure compliance of such timeline.”[10] Third, all counsel are expressly directed to “strictly adhere to the timelines fixed” by the bench and conclude oral arguments within the allotted time.

The filing of the brief note can be routed through the Advocate-on-Record or, where the bench has nominated one, through a nodal counsel. The earlier Circular of April 3, 2024 (F.No. 9/Judl./2024) had established the architecture of nodal counsel compilation for large matters, requiring indexed volumes of written submissions.[11] The December 2025 SOP condenses this framework for regular hearings into a single-document, five-page cap.

The Due Process Dimension: Does the Cap Curtail the Right to Be Heard?

Critics of the five-page cap have argued that it creates a structural asymmetry in litigation — particularly disadvantageous to litigants in complex, document-heavy, or multi-issue appeals where even the statement of facts can exhaust five pages. The concern is most acute in matters raising substantial questions of constitutional law, where the Court itself has historically required and encouraged elaborate written submissions.

The natural justice principle of audi alteram partem — “hear the other side” — is constitutionally embedded. The Supreme Court has consistently held that procedural rules cannot be used to negate the substantive right of a party to present its case. Whether a five-page written note, supplemented by bench-allotted oral argument time, constitutes a constitutionally adequate hearing will vary case by case. In a two-issue special leave petition, five pages may be ample. In a case involving multiple constitutional questions with competing statutory provisions and conflicting High Court precedent, it may not be.

The Indian Bar Association, in its advisory issued after the SOP, welcomed the reform while cautioning that “written arguments are not a mere formality, but a serious professional responsibility governed by binding law.”[12] The IBA described the SOP as “a decisive move towards discipline, efficiency, transparency, and equal opportunity, particularly benefiting junior advocates and litigants who cannot afford prolonged or unstructured hearings.” This framing — efficiency as a form of equality — is worth taking seriously: when high-profile matters consume days of court time, the judicial calendar crowds out the claims of those with lesser resources.

A more nuanced reading of the SOP, articulated in Live Law’s analysis, is that the five-page cap is the only fixed ceiling the SOP introduces; the oral argument timeline is a proposed figure rather than a rigid cap.[4] Counsel who indicate they need two hours are not guaranteed two hours, but neither are they cut off at thirty minutes by an automatic rule. The bench retains full discretion to extend or curtail. The SOP relocates flexibility “from indulgent defaults to informed judicial control” — a recalibration rather than a curtailment of the hearing process.

Regulatory Context: Earlier Reforms and the Path Forward

The December 2025 SOP is not the first attempt to introduce procedural discipline at the Supreme Court level. The August 2023 Circular (F. No. 57/Judl./2022) introduced timelines and volume-based written submission requirements specifically for Constitution Bench matters, requiring advance disclosure of oral argument schedules, nomination of nodal counsel, and preparation of indexed PDF volumes.[13] The April 2024 Circular (F.No. 9/Judl./2024) extended similar requirements to large regular hearing matters. What is new about the December 2025 SOP is its universality — it applies to all post-notice and regular hearing matters across the Court’s jurisdiction — and its concreteness, setting a fixed five-page ceiling rather than a generalised obligation of conciseness.

Looking ahead, the supreme court SOP raises a structural question: the adequacy of judicial support infrastructure to process advance written submissions. Without sufficient law clerk assistance and research support, time limits risk shifting burden to judges who must read more material outside court hours. The SOP is therefore as much a challenge to the Court’s own administrative apparatus as it is a demand on the Bar.

Ultimately, the five-page cap on written submissions is best understood as a structural intervention in a system where the ratio of judicial resources to case volume has become unsustainable. With 92,101 cases pending before the apex court alone as of December 2025, and over 4.76 crore cases pending nationally,[2] the Court cannot afford a regime in which hearing time and preparation resources are distributed without structure. The SOP does not abolish the right to be heard — it asks that the exercise of that right be disciplined, advance-notified, and focused. Whether it achieves that balance will depend not on the text of the circular, but on how individual benches apply it in practice.

Conclusion

The Supreme Court SOP on Written Submissions, which introduces a five-page cap, was issued through Circular F. No. 29/Judl./2025 dated December 29, 2025, and represents a significant procedural recalibration at India’s apex court. Grounded in Article 145 of the Constitution, consistent with the Supreme Court Rules, 2013, and drawing on the Court’s jurisprudential tradition in Salem Advocate Bar Association (II) and Hussainara Khatoon, the SOP seeks to reconcile two important imperatives: the individual litigant’s right to a meaningful hearing under Article 21, and the institutional obligation to deliver timely justice to the tens of thousands of cases pending before the Court.

The SOP structures the right to be heard rather than eliminating it. The critical test lies in how it interacts with complex matters, whether benches use residual discretion to accommodate cases outgrowing five pages, and whether the Court’s own support infrastructure develops to engage meaningfully with advance submissions. It stands as one of the most consequential administrative interventions in the Court’s recent history — deserving the serious, engaged scrutiny that its scope demands.

References

[1] Law Trend, ‘Supreme Court Issues SOP For Timelines In Oral Arguments; Counsel To Submit Estimates Via Online Portal’ (December 31, 2025) https://lawtrend.in/supreme-court-issues-sop-for-timelines-in-oral-arguments-counsel-to-submit-estimates-via-online-portal/

[2] Tripura Net, ‘Supreme Court Pendency Surges Over 92,000 Cases’ (February 2026) https://tripuranet.com/supreme-court-pendency-surges.html

[3] Supreme Court Observer, ‘November 2025: Pendency Steadily Increases by 400 Cases’ (December 12, 2025) https://www.scobserver.in/journal/november-2025-pendency-steadily-increases-by-400-cases/

[4] Live Law, ‘Time, Arguments And Justice: Cooperation, Not Compulsion, At The Heart Of New SOP’ (December 31, 2025) https://www.livelaw.in/articles/supreme-court-sop-on-argument-timelines-analysis-516589

[5] Constitution of India, Article 145 (as amended); Constitution of India Net https://www.constitutionofindia.net/articles/article-145-rules-of-court-etc/

[6] Supreme Court Rules, 2013, published vide GSR 368(E) dated 27 May 2014; Indian Kanoon https://indiankanoon.org/doc/45279932/

[7] Salem Advocate Bar Association (II) v. Union of India, (2005) 6 SCC 344; Indian Kanoon https://indiankanoon.org/doc/342197/

[8] India Legal Live, ‘Supreme Court Introduces SOP Mandating Timelines for Oral Arguments in All Hearings’ (December 31, 2025) https://indialegallive.com/constitutional-law-news/courts-news/supreme-court-introduces-sop-mandating-timelines-for-oral-arguments-in-all-hearings/

[9] Hussainara Khatoon & Ors. v. Home Secretary, State of Bihar, AIR 1979 SC 1369; (1980) 1 SCC 98; Indian Kanoon https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1373215/

[10] Verdictum, ‘Supreme Court Issues SOP For Time-Bound Oral Arguments And Concise Written Submissions’ (December 30, 2025) https://www.verdictum.in/news/supreme-court-new-sop-time-bound-oral-arguments-concise-written-submissions-1602864

[11] Supreme Court of India, Circular F.No. 9/Judl./2024 dated 3 April 2024 (regarding written submissions and nodal counsel); S3waas CDN https://cdnbbsr.s3waas.gov.in/s3ec0490f1f4972d133619a60c30f3559e/uploads/2024/04/2024040352.pdf

[12] SC News, ‘After Supreme Court SOP, Indian Bar Association Welcomes Move; Issues Advisory to Advocates on Written Submissions’ (December 30, 2025) https://rashidkhanpathan.com/after-supreme-court-sop-indian-bar-association-welcomes-move-issues-advisory-to-advocates-on-written-submissions/

[13] Tax Guru, ‘Supreme Court Guidelines for Written Submissions and Oral Arguments’ (September 4, 2023) [Circular No. F. No. 57/Judl./2022 dated 22 August 2023] https://taxguru.in/income-tax/supreme-court-guidelines-written-submissions-oral-arguments.html