TL;DR: A review petition asks the same court that decided a case to look at its own judgment again, under Article 137 of the Constitution and Order XLVII of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013. It is not an appeal - the only grounds are an error apparent on the face of the record, discovery of new evidence that could not have been produced earlier, or another sufficient reason of the same character, and it must ordinarily be filed within thirty days. Most review petitions are decided in chambers by circulation, without a hearing, and the great majority are dismissed at that stage.

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What a review petition is, and what it is not

A review petition asks the Supreme Court to revisit a judgment or order it has already pronounced, in the same case, before the same court. It is filed after the case is over, not while it is pending, and it is addressed to the very bench (or, more often now, the same panel of judges in a differently constituted bench) that decided the matter.

The Supreme Court has said this repeatedly, in language that recurs across decades of review jurisprudence: a review is not an appeal in disguise. In Parsion Devi v. Sumitri Devi, decided on 14 October 1997 and reported at (1997) 8 SCC 715, the Court held that a review “is by no means an appeal in disguise whereby an erroneous decision is reheard and corrected, but lies only for patent error.” That single sentence explains most of what makes a review petition hard to win. An appeal lets a higher court say the lower court got the law wrong. A review does not let the same court say it might have reasoned better. It only lets the court correct a mistake that is obvious without argument.

That distinction matters because a large share of review petitions filed in the Supreme Court are, in substance, attempts to reopen an argument that has already been heard and rejected. The Court’s own language for this is unforgiving: the error must be self-evident, not one that has to be “detected by a process of reasoning,” as the Court reiterated in Shri Ram Sahu (Dead) Through Lrs and Ors. v. Vinod Kumar Rawat and Ors., decided on 3 November 2020. If establishing the error takes an extended argument, the petition is not a review petition, whatever it is titled.

The constitutional and statutory basis

Three sources of law govern review, and a practitioner needs all three to draft competently.

Article 137 of the Constitution is the source of the power itself. It reads: “Subject to the provisions of any law made by Parliament or any rules made under Article 145, the Supreme Court shall have power to review any judgment pronounced or order made by it.” The power belongs to the Supreme Court in respect of its own judgments and orders - it is not a general appellate review of a lower court’s decision - and it is expressly made subject to rules framed under Article 145, which is why the procedural detail sits in the Supreme Court Rules rather than the Constitution.

Order XLVII Rule 1 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 supplies the substantive grounds. It provides that any person considering himself aggrieved by a decree or order may apply for a review to the court that passed it, on the discovery of new and important matter or evidence, on account of some mistake or error apparent on the face of the record, or for any other sufficient reason. The Supreme Court applies this framework to its own review jurisdiction even though Order XLVII CPC is, on its terms, a rule of civil procedure meant for civil courts and sits within the wider structure our CPC basics primer covers, treating the CPC grounds as the working test for review under Article 137 across both civil and criminal matters, as the summary of grounds in Shri Ram Sahu makes clear.

Order XLVII of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013 supplies the procedure. Rule 2 fixes the limitation period: an application for review must be filed within thirty days from the date of the judgment or order sought to be reviewed. Rule 3 fixes the default mode of disposal: unless otherwise ordered by the Court, an application for review is disposed of by circulation, without any oral arguments. A further rule provides that a review, as far as practicable, is placed before the same judge or bench of judges who delivered the judgment under review - a point the Court restated in Yashwant Sinha v. Central Bureau of Investigation, decided 14 November 2019, and one that traces back to the Court’s own account of the practice in P.N. Eswara Iyer v. Registrar, Supreme Court of India, decided 1 February 1980.

Put together, these three sources answer three different questions. Article 137 answers whether the power exists. Order XLVII Rule 1 CPC answers on what grounds it can be used. Order XLVII of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013 answers how, and within what time, it must be exercised. None of this overlaps with the Supreme Court’s writ jurisdiction under Article 32, which our explainer on the five writs and our guide on how to file a writ petition cover separately.

For the constitutional companion power that lets the Supreme Court transfer cases across state lines rather than review its own judgments, see our guide on the transfer petition in the Supreme Court.

The three grounds for review, and why “error apparent” is read so narrowly

Every review petition has to fit into one of three boxes, and the boxes are narrower than they look on paper.

Discovery of new and important evidence. The evidence must genuinely be new - it must not have been within the applicant’s knowledge, and could not, with reasonable diligence, have been produced when the case was originally argued. A document that existed all along and was simply not placed on record through oversight does not qualify. The ground protects against injustice caused by evidence that was truly unavailable, not against a party’s own lapse in preparation.

Error apparent on the face of the record. This is the ground most review petitions rely on, and the one courts guard most jealously. The Supreme Court’s own formulation, restated in Shri Ram Sahu, is that the error must be “evident per se from the record” and must not “require detailed examination, scrutiny and elucidation.” An error that can only be identified by re-arguing the case, re-weighing the evidence, or working through a chain of reasoning is, by definition, not apparent. A judgment can be wrong - wrongly decided on the facts, or wrongly reasoned on the law - without containing an error apparent on its face. Only the second is reviewable; the first is a matter for appeal, and if no appeal lies or the appellate remedy is exhausted, the decision stands.

Any other sufficient reason. Courts read this residual ground narrowly too, treating it as limited to reasons analogous in character to the first two grounds - not a general licence to reopen a case whenever a party feels the outcome was unjust.

The practical consequence is that a review petition drafted around dissatisfaction with the Court’s reasoning, however sincerely held, is very likely to fail at the threshold. The petition has to identify something specific: a fact on the record that the judgment overlooked, a statutory provision that was not brought to the Court’s notice and would have changed the outcome, an internal contradiction in the judgment itself, or evidence genuinely unavailable earlier. General grievance with the result is not a ground.

The thirty-day limit, and whether it can be condoned

Order XLVII Rule 2 of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013 requires a review petition to be filed within thirty days from the date of the judgment or order under review. That is a short window by the standards of Supreme Court practice, and it runs from the date of the judgment or order itself, not from the date a certified copy of the judgment is received, so a litigant who delays applying for a certified copy loses time from the same thirty days rather than gaining it.

The thirty-day period is not treated as an absolute bar. In practice, the Supreme Court entertains applications for condonation of delay in filing a review petition, filed as an interlocutory application alongside the review petition itself, supported by an affidavit explaining the delay. Reported orders show the Court routinely disposing of both the condonation application and the review petition together - for instance in Anil Kumar Khanna and Ors. v. Indian Tourism Development Corporation, decided 17 July 2015, where the Court dismissed both “the review petition as well as the application for condonation of delay in filing the review petition” in a single order, and in The State of Madhya Pradesh v. Smt. Kamla Doorwar, decided 24 June 2014, where the Court held that “no case is made out for condonation of delay” on the specific facts before it. Both orders confirm the same underlying point: a delayed review petition is not thrown out on the calendar alone, but the applicant carries the burden of showing sufficient cause for every day of the delay, and a routine or unexplained gap is unlikely to survive scrutiny. For the general Supreme Court standard on what counts as sufficient cause, our guide to condonation of delay covers the Katiji and Balakrishnan tests that courts apply across contexts, including review applications.

Circulation in chambers: the default, and its narrow exceptions

The ordinary Supreme Court review petition is never argued in open court. Order XLVII Rule 3 of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013 states that, unless otherwise ordered by the Court, an application for review is disposed of by circulation, without any oral arguments. The judges who decide it read the petition, the original judgment, and any written material on file, in chambers, and pass an order - almost always a short order dismissing the petition, occasionally an order issuing notice for a fuller hearing, and rarely an order allowing the review outright on the papers.

This is the point that surprises litigants most. There is, ordinarily, no day in court, no oral argument, and no opportunity to respond to a judge’s question in real time - the petition has to do all of its persuasive work on paper, which is one reason its drafting discipline differs from, and in some ways is harder than, drafting for a live hearing.

The “unless otherwise ordered” language in Rule 3 is not decorative - the Court retains discretion to direct an oral hearing where the stakes or the nature of the alleged error warrant it - but a litigant should not plan a review petition on the assumption of getting one. The default is circulation, and the exception has to be earned.

The route from judgment to review to curative

The diagram below tracks the path from a Supreme Court judgment through a review petition to the narrow curative jurisdiction that survives a failed review.

flowchart TD
    A[Supreme Court judgment or order] --> B{Error apparent, new evidence, or analogous ground?}
    B -- No ground identified --> Z[No remedy - doctrine of finality applies]
    B -- Ground exists --> C[File review petition within 30 days - Article 137, Order XLVII]
    C --> D{Death sentence case?}
    D -- Yes --> E[Open court oral hearing, 3+ judges, up to 30 minutes - Mohd. Arif, 2014]
    D -- No --> F[Circulated in chambers, no oral arguments - Order XLVII Rule 3]
    E --> G{Error apparent found?}
    F --> G
    G -- Yes --> H[Review allowed - judgment recalled or modified]
    G -- No --> I[Review dismissed]
    I --> J{Natural justice violation of comparable gravity?}
    J -- Yes --> K[Curative petition - Rupa Ashok Hurra, 2002]
    J -- No --> L[Judgment stands as final]
    K --> M[Curative decided in chambers by senior-most judges]

Who sits on the review bench

Supreme Court practice, restated by the Court itself in Yashwant Sinha v. Central Bureau of Investigation and traceable to its own account of procedure in P.N. Eswara Iyer v. Registrar, Supreme Court of India, is that a review petition is, as far as practicable, placed before the same judge or bench who delivered the judgment under review - on the logic that the judges best placed to recognise an error in their own reasoning are the ones who wrote it. A different bench, coming to the record fresh, would in effect be re-deciding the case rather than checking it for a patent mistake.

“As far as practicable” is a qualification, not a formality. Judges retire, are elevated, or become otherwise unavailable, and the original bench cannot always be reconstituted years later. Where it cannot, the Court has directed the matter to a differently constituted bench rather than leaving it undecided - a point the Constitution Bench addressed in the death sentence context below, directing such petitions “be disposed of as soon as possible by a bench of three Hon’ble Judges” where the original judges could not be reassembled.

Oral hearing in death sentence cases after Mohd. Arif

The circulation-only default has one significant carve-out, and it came from the Supreme Court itself confronting the stakes of its own procedure in capital cases.

In Mohd. Arif @ Ashfaq v. Registrar, Supreme Court of India and Ors., a Constitution Bench decision reported at (2014) 9 SCC 737 and decided on 2 September 2014, the Court held that a review petition against a death sentence cannot be disposed of by circulation alone. Writing for the majority, Justice R.F. Nariman reasoned that “when it is a question of life and death of a person, even a remote chance of deviating from such a decision while exercising the review jurisdiction, would justify oral hearing in a review petition,” and held that a limited oral hearing at the review stage is required by Article 21 of the Constitution in death sentence matters.

The Court fixed the contours of that hearing precisely: a bench of at least three judges, and an oral hearing subject to an outer limit of thirty minutes. It reaffirmed the ordinary rule that a review should be heard by the same bench that decided the appeal, providing that where the original judges are no longer available, a fresh bench of three judges should take up the matter without delay.

Mohd. Arif therefore creates a narrow, high-stakes exception inside a system that otherwise runs on paper. Outside death sentence cases, the Court’s general position, restated in the same judgment, is that circulation without oral arguments remains the rule, since extending an oral-hearing right to every review petition would overwhelm a docket that already runs on a presumption against reopening decided cases. The exception exists because the consequence of a missed error apparent in a capital case is irreversible in a way no other category shares.

What actually happens to a review petition

A practitioner should go in with a realistic sense of the odds. The Supreme Court has not published, and this article has not found, any official aggregate statistic on the proportion of review petitions that succeed, so no specific success or dismissal rate is stated here - a number without a named, verifiable source would not be honest reporting. What can be said is a description rather than a percentage: the ordinary review petition is dismissed on the papers at the circulation stage, without reasons beyond a short order, for failing to identify anything beyond disagreement with the Court’s earlier reasoning. Petitions that are allowed tend to share one feature - a specific, identifiable error on the face of the record, such as a fact overlooked, a provision not considered, or an internal inconsistency - and read less like a second round of argument and more like the correction of a nameable defect.

Drafting a review petition: how it differs from an SLP

A special leave petition under Article 136 asks the Supreme Court to exercise a discretionary appellate jurisdiction over a judgment of a court or tribunal below it - a High Court, a tribunal, or another forum whose order has not yet reached the Supreme Court. A review petition asks the Supreme Court to revisit its own prior judgment or order in the same matter. The two documents look similar on the surface - both are captioned petitions, both carry grounds, both are filed by an Advocate-on-Record authorised through a vakalatnama - but the drafting logic is different in several concrete ways.

The frame of the argument. An SLP argues that the order under challenge is wrong, raises a substantial question of law, or reveals a miscarriage of justice serious enough to justify discretionary Article 136 intervention. A review petition cannot argue that the Supreme Court’s own judgment is simply wrong. It must identify the specific ground - error apparent, new evidence, or an analogous sufficient reason - and confine the drafting to that ground. An SLP that argues broadly is doing its job; a review petition that argues broadly is likely to be dismissed for it.

What is being challenged, and from what record. An SLP challenges an order below the Supreme Court, built from the trial court or High Court record and pleadings there. A review petition challenges the Supreme Court’s own order, and the drafting works almost entirely from the text of that judgment - identifying exactly where, on its face, the error sits - rather than a fresh narrative of the underlying dispute.

The relief sought. An SLP seeks leave to appeal and, if granted, a reversal or modification on the merits, filed while the case is still procedurally open. A review petition seeks recall or modification of a judgment that has already closed the litigation, so it starts from a presumption of finality the drafting has to overcome, rather than an open question decided for the first time.

Because a review petition succeeds or fails on the text of a single judgment, confirming that the precedent behind your proposed ground has not since been distinguished or overruled matters more here than in an ordinary appeal. Niyam’s citator, which flags overruled or since-qualified authority, catches exactly this kind of drafting risk before it reaches the Registry. For the procedural detail of the SLP route itself, including who can file and how leave is sought, see our companion guide on the special leave petition under Article 136.

Review, curative petition and SLP compared

FeatureReview petitionCurative petitionSpecial leave petition (SLP)
Constitutional or statutory basisArticle 137; Order XLVII CPC; Order XLVII, SC Rules 2013Evolved in Rupa Ashok Hurra v. Ashok Hurra, (2002) 4 SCC 388; no separate constitutional articleArticle 136
What is challengedThe Supreme Court’s own judgment or orderA Supreme Court order after review has failedAn order of a High Court, tribunal, or other court below the Supreme Court
Time limit30 days from the judgment or order (Order XLVII Rule 2, SC Rules 2013)Not specified in the RulesNot specified in the Rules as a fixed period; governed by the Limitation Act’s article for appeals
Default mode of hearingCirculation in chambers, no oral arguments, unless otherwise ordered (Order XLVII Rule 3, SC Rules 2013)Circulated to senior-most judges; heard in chambers as a ruleHeard in open court
Oral hearing as of right✗ (narrow exception for death sentence review, per Mohd. Arif, (2014) 9 SCC 737)✗✓
Senior advocate certification required✗✓ (per Rupa Ashok Hurra)✗
Bench compositionAs far as practicable, same judges who decided the matterSenior-most judges available, generally not the original benchAny bench assigned by roster
Grounds availableError apparent on the record, new evidence, or analogous sufficient reason (Order XLVII Rule 1, CPC)Violation of natural justice or a defect of a fundamentally similar gravity, as recognised in Rupa Ashok HurraAny substantial question warranting the Court’s discretionary intervention

Where a rule or the Rules themselves are silent on a point, the table says so rather than marking it with a cross, since silence is not the same as a documented refusal.

For the procedure and grounds specific to the curative jurisdiction, see our dedicated guide on the curative petition in India.

When review is the wrong door

Not every complaint about a Supreme Court outcome, or an outcome that reached the Supreme Court, belongs in a review petition. Three situations account for most of the wrong-door filings.

The Supreme Court dismissed your special leave petition without giving reasons. A large share of SLPs are dismissed in limine, with no more than a short order recording that the Court found no reason to interfere. The Supreme Court clarified the consequence of such a dismissal in Kunhayammed and Ors. v. State of Kerala and Anr., decided 19 July 2000 and reported at (2000) 6 SCC 359: a non-speaking dismissal does not merge the High Court’s order into the Supreme Court’s order, because merger applies only where the Court has granted leave, issued notice, and heard the appeal on its merits. A bare in-limine dismissal expresses no view on the order below, so the High Court’s order remains operative, and review has to be sought before the High Court, under its own review jurisdiction - distinct from the supervisory jurisdiction our guide on Article 226 versus Article 227 explains - not before the Supreme Court.

You have not yet been to the Supreme Court at all. If the order you object to was passed by a High Court or a tribunal and you have not filed an SLP against it, a review petition in the Supreme Court is not available, because there is no Supreme Court judgment or order to review. The route in that situation is an SLP under Article 136, filed within the ordinary limitation period for appeals, not a review.

Your review petition has already been dismissed and you believe the judgment causes a grave miscarriage of justice. Once a review has failed, the review route is exhausted for that judgment. The narrow remedy that survives is the curative petition, evolved by the Supreme Court in Rupa Ashok Hurra v. Ashok Hurra, and confined to violations of natural justice or defects of comparable gravity, certified by a senior advocate, rather than a second attempt at the same review grounds. It is not a door that opens easily, and it should not be approached as a routine next step after an unsuccessful review.

A fourth, quieter category deserves mention too: petitions where the honest answer is that no remedy remains. If the objection is simply that the Court’s reasoning could have gone the other way, without an identifiable error apparent on the record, the doctrine of finality applies, and neither review nor curative jurisdiction exists to reopen that question. Filing anyway, on facts that plainly do not meet the standard, risks a dismissal that records as much on the file. A related but distinct concern - anticipating that the other side might rush an ex parte application while your review is pending - is what a caveat petition is for, not review procedure itself.

Frequently asked questions

What is a review petition in the Supreme Court of India?

A review petition asks the Supreme Court to reconsider a judgment or order it has already delivered, in the same case, under Article 137 of the Constitution read with Order XLVII of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013. It is not a fresh appeal and does not reopen the merits generally. It is confined to specific grounds - an error apparent on the face of the record, discovery of new evidence, or an analogous sufficient reason - and is usually decided on the papers without an oral hearing.

Within how many days must a review petition be filed?

Order XLVII Rule 2 of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013 requires a review petition to be filed within thirty days from the date of the judgment or order sought to be reviewed. The period runs from the date of the judgment itself, so delay in obtaining a certified copy is not automatically excluded from the thirty days, and any resulting delay has to be separately explained in a condonation application.

Can the thirty-day limit for filing a review petition be condoned?

In practice, yes, subject to sufficient cause. Litigants routinely file an application for condonation of delay along with a late review petition, supported by an affidavit. Reported Supreme Court orders show such applications being considered and decided on their facts - and frequently dismissed where the delay is not adequately explained - which confirms that condonation is available in principle but is not granted as a matter of course.

What counts as an “error apparent on the face of the record”?

An error apparent must be self-evident from the record, without requiring extended argument or a fresh weighing of evidence to establish it. The Supreme Court has repeatedly distinguished this from an erroneous decision - a judgment can be wrongly decided without containing an error apparent on its face, and only the latter is reviewable. If identifying the alleged error requires the kind of reasoning that would be needed to reargue the case, it does not qualify.

Is a review petition heard in open court?

Ordinarily, no. Order XLVII Rule 3 of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013 provides that, unless otherwise ordered by the Court, a review petition is disposed of by circulation, without any oral arguments. The judges decide it in chambers on the papers. The Court retains discretion to direct an oral hearing in an individual matter, but a litigant should not assume one will be granted.

Are death sentence review petitions heard differently?

Yes. In Mohd. Arif @ Ashfaq v. Registrar, Supreme Court of India, (2014) 9 SCC 737, a Constitution Bench held that review petitions in death sentence cases must be given a limited oral hearing in open court, before a bench of at least three judges, subject to an outer limit of thirty minutes, because the finality and irreversibility of a death sentence justify a hearing that the ordinary circulation procedure does not provide.

Which judges hear a review petition?

As far as practicable, a review petition is placed before the same judge or bench that delivered the judgment under review, on the reasoning that those judges are best placed to identify any error in their own reasoning. Where the original judges are no longer available - because of retirement or elevation, for instance - the matter is placed before a differently constituted bench rather than left undecided.

What proportion of review petitions succeed?

No official aggregate figure on review petition outcomes has been published by the Supreme Court, so no percentage can be honestly stated here. What is consistent across the Court’s own review orders is a pattern rather than a number: most review petitions are dismissed at the circulation stage for failing to identify a specific error apparent, and the petitions that succeed tend to point to a concrete, nameable defect in the judgment rather than a broader disagreement with the outcome.

How does a review petition differ from a special leave petition?

A special leave petition under Article 136 challenges an order of a court or tribunal that has not yet reached the Supreme Court, and asks the Court to exercise discretionary appellate jurisdiction over it. A review petition challenges the Supreme Court’s own prior judgment in the same case, on narrow, specified grounds, and is drafted around the judgment’s text rather than the underlying record from the courts below.

Can I file a review petition if my SLP was dismissed without reasons?

Not before the Supreme Court, in most cases. The Court held in Kunhayammed and Ors. v. State of Kerala and Anr., (2000) 6 SCC 359, that a non-speaking dismissal of an SLP does not merge the High Court’s order into the Supreme Court’s order, because merger requires the Court to have granted leave and heard the appeal. Where the SLP was dismissed in limine, the High Court’s order remains operative, and review lies before the High Court, not the Supreme Court.

What happens after a review petition is dismissed?

The judgment under review stands, and the review route for that judgment is exhausted. The only remedy that survives, in a narrow class of cases involving a violation of natural justice or a defect of comparable gravity, is a curative petition under the framework the Supreme Court laid down in Rupa Ashok Hurra v. Ashok Hurra, (2002) 4 SCC 388. It is not available simply because the review petition was unsuccessful on its ordinary merits.

Does a review petition require a new Advocate-on-Record?

A review petition, like any Supreme Court filing, must be filed and conducted by an Advocate-on-Record. Whether the same AOR who handled the original matter continues to act is a matter of instruction and practice between the litigant and counsel, and this article has not found a Supreme Court Rules provision mandating that the identical AOR must be retained for the review stage.

Is there a page limit or format requirement for a review petition?

Review petitions, like other Supreme Court filings, must comply with the general drafting and formatting requirements set out in the Supreme Court Rules, 2013, and are filed through the Registry or the e-filing portal along with the required affidavit and annexures. This article has not verified a review-specific page limit distinct from the Court’s general filing requirements, and practitioners should confirm the current formatting circular with the Registry before filing.

Can new evidence be introduced in a review petition?

Only if it is genuinely new - evidence that was not within the applicant’s knowledge and could not, with reasonable diligence, have been produced at the time of the original hearing. Evidence that existed and was simply not placed on record through oversight does not satisfy this ground, because the ground exists to correct injustice caused by evidence that was truly unavailable, not to reward a lapse in preparation.

Can the government or a private party both file a review petition?

Yes. Any party aggrieved by a Supreme Court judgment or order, whether a private litigant, a company, or the government, can file a review petition on the same grounds and within the same thirty-day period. There is no separate or extended limitation for government litigants under Order XLVII of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013.

Does filing a review petition stay the operation of the original judgment?

Filing a review petition does not automatically stay the judgment under review. A stay, if required, has to be separately sought and separately justified, distinct from the Court’s wider power to do complete justice discussed in our note on Article 142, and the Court considers it on its own footing rather than as an automatic consequence of the review petition being on file.

What should the petition actually say, in practice?

It should identify one specific, nameable defect - a fact the Court overlooked, a provision it did not consider, or an internal contradiction - rather than reargue the case broadly. Draft the ground in a single sentence and test whether it can be verified without reading the entire judgment; if not, it is probably not an error apparent. Cited authority also needs checking against current standing; see our note on checking whether a judgment is still good law and our guide on primary versus secondary legal sources.

Where this leaves a practitioner

A review petition is a narrow instrument used for a narrow purpose: correcting a specific, demonstrable defect in a judgment the Supreme Court has already delivered, not reopening an argument the Court has already considered and rejected. The thirty-day window is short, the default disposal is on the papers without a hearing, and the standard for the central ground - error apparent on the face of the record - is deliberately unforgiving. Death sentence cases are the one category where the Court has built in an oral hearing, because the finality of that outcome leaves no room for a missed defect to go uncorrected.

Getting the ground right, and citing it against precedent that is still good law, is most of the work. Niyam is built for exactly that kind of verification - it searches across a large corpus of Indian judgments with every result grounded in a citable primary source, so a practitioner can confirm whether the authority behind a proposed review ground still stands, rather than relying on a remembered citation that has since been distinguished, or worse, one an unverified AI tool invented outright, the risk our piece on hallucinated citations in India documents.

Before filing, read the judgment you intend to review as closely as the Court itself will read it - our guide on how to read a judgment sets out the discipline that a review-drafting exercise depends on most.