Where to File a Commercial Suit in Delhi: Jurisdiction Under the Commercial Courts Act 2015

A commercial suit in Delhi is filed before the Commercial Division of the Delhi High Court where the specified value of the subject matter exceeds INR 2 crore, and before a Commercial Court in the district judiciary where the specified value is not less than INR 3 lakh but does not exceed INR 2 crore. Below INR 3 lakh the Commercial Courts Act 2015 does not apply at all, and the matter proceeds as an ordinary civil suit under the unamended Code of Civil Procedure. Two questions therefore have to be answered before a plaint is drafted: is the dispute a "commercial dispute" within Section 2(1)(c), and what is its specified value under Section 12.

Getting either answer wrong is expensive in a way other pleading errors are not. A plaint filed in the wrong forum can be returned under Order VII Rule 10 of the Code, and the time spent is time lost against limitation. A plaint filed in the right forum but without the Section 12A mediation certificate, where no urgent interim relief is genuinely sought, is liable to be rejected outright.

What counts as a "commercial dispute" under Section 2(1)(c)?

The Act does not define commercial disputes by reference to the parties or to any general notion of trade. It supplies a closed list of twenty-two categories, and a dispute either falls within one of them or it does not.

The list covers ordinary transactions of merchants, bankers, financiers and traders, including mercantile documents and their enforcement and interpretation; export or import of merchandise or services; admiralty and maritime law; transactions in aircraft and helicopters, including sale, leasing and financing; carriage of goods; construction and infrastructure contracts, including tenders; agreements relating to immovable property used exclusively in trade or commerce; franchising, distribution and licensing agreements; management and consultancy agreements; joint venture, shareholders and partnership agreements; subscription and investment agreements in the services industry, including outsourcing and financial services; mercantile agency and mercantile usage; technology development agreements; intellectual property rights in registered and unregistered trade marks, copyright, patents, designs, domain names, geographical indications and semiconductor integrated circuits; agreements for the sale of goods or provision of services; exploitation of oil and gas reserves or other natural resources including electromagnetic spectrum; insurance and re-insurance; and contracts of agency relating to any of the above. A final clause allows the Central Government to notify further categories.

Two clarifications in the Explanation do real work. A dispute does not cease to be commercial merely because it also involves recovery of immovable property, realisation of monies out of immovable property given as security, or other relief pertaining to immovable property. Nor does it cease to be commercial merely because a contracting party is the State, an agency or instrumentality of the State, or a private body carrying out public functions. Contracts with public sector undertakings and government departments are squarely within the scheme.

Does a dispute over immovable property qualify?

Only on a narrow footing, and this is where the largest number of misfiled plaints originate. Clause (vii) covers "agreements relating to immovable property used exclusively in trade or commerce". The word "exclusively" is not decorative. The clause is read strictly: the property must actually be used exclusively in trade or commerce as at the date of the suit, and an intention to put it to commercial use at some point in the future does not convert an ordinary property dispute into a commercial one. Mixed user does not answer the description either — a floor let to a business with the remainder in residential occupation falls outside the clause, because the statutory word is "exclusively" and not "principally". The same reasoning excludes a vacant plot bought for an eventual commercial project and a family property in which a business is only incidentally carried on.

The test on the file is therefore evidentiary. If the plaint asserts commercial user, it should carry the material that proves it — the lease or licence in favour of a business occupant, rent receipts, the trade licence, the GST registration at the address. A bare averment invites an application on maintainability that can consume the first year of the suit.

What is the "specified value", and how is it calculated?

Section 2(1)(i) defines Specified Value as the value of the subject matter in respect of a suit, as determined in accordance with Section 12, which shall not be less than three lakh rupees or such higher value as may be notified by the Central Government. The original figure was one crore rupees. The 2018 amendment — formally the Commercial Courts, Commercial Division and Commercial Appellate Division of High Courts (Amendment) Act 2018, which also shortened the principal Act's title to the Commercial Courts Act 2015 — brought it down to three lakh rupees, and that reduction is the single change that transformed the Act from a High Court instrument into a district judiciary one.

Section 12 then prescribes the method of valuation, and it is mechanical:

Three consequences follow that are easy to miss.

Interest counts, but only to the date of filing. A principal claim of INR 2.4 crore with contractual interest accrued to the date of the plaint is valued at the composite figure. Interest accruing after institution does not retrospectively enlarge the specified value or shift the forum.

Valuation of an intangible right is the plaintiff's own estimate. Clause (d) says so in terms. That is not a licence to inflate — the estimate must be justifiable and it fixes court fee exposure — but in trade mark, copyright and design matters the plaintiff carries the initial responsibility for the number that decides the forum.

A counter-claim can move the case. Section 9 provides for transfer of a suit pending before an ordinary civil court to the Commercial Division or Commercial Court where a counter-claim of a commercial dispute of specified value is raised in it. For arbitration, Section 12(2) takes the aggregate of the claim and counter-claim as the measure.

Section 12(3) closes off a familiar delaying tactic. No appeal, and no civil revision application under Section 115 of the Code, lies from an order of a Commercial Division or Commercial Court finding that it has jurisdiction under the Act. Section 8 reinforces the point: no civil revision application or petition lies against any interlocutory order of a Commercial Court, including one on the issue of jurisdiction, and such a challenge — subject to the appeals that Section 13 does permit — can only be raised in an appeal against the decree.

Delhi High Court or district Commercial Court: how the line is drawn

Delhi is one of the High Courts that retains ordinary original civil jurisdiction, alongside Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. That is why the two-tier question arises here at all; where a High Court has no original side, every commercial suit begins in the district judiciary.

The pecuniary line is set by Section 5(2) of the Delhi High Court Act 1966, amended in 2015 to raise the High Court's ordinary original civil jurisdiction from suits valued above INR 20 lakh to suits whose value exceeds INR 2 crore. The Commercial Courts Act does not displace that limit; it layers a subject-matter filter and a specialised procedure on top of it.

The machinery behind that table sits in four sections. Section 3 empowers the State Government, after consultation with the High Court, to constitute Commercial Courts at district level; a first proviso permits, for a High Court having ordinary original civil jurisdiction, constitution at District Judge level; and a further proviso permits the State Government, for a territory over which such a High Court has ordinary original civil jurisdiction, to specify a pecuniary value not less than three lakh rupees and not more than the pecuniary jurisdiction exercisable by the District Courts. Section 4 empowers the Chief Justice of such a High Court to constitute a Commercial Division of one or more single-Judge Benches, and Section 5 to constitute a Commercial Appellate Division of one or more Division Benches. Section 6 vests the Commercial Court with jurisdiction over commercial disputes of specified value arising within its territorial limits.

Territorial jurisdiction is untouched by any of this. Sections 16 to 20 of the Code continue to govern where a suit may be instituted — the situation of immovable property, the defendant's residence or place of business, or the place where the cause of action wholly or in part arose. An exclusive jurisdiction clause can confine the parties to one of two or more courts that independently have jurisdiction, but it cannot confer jurisdiction on a court that has none. The Commercial Courts Act tells you which court within a place; the Code still tells you which place.

Intellectual property adds a layer in Delhi. Section 134 of the Trade Marks Act 1999, Section 62 of the Copyright Act 1957 and Section 104 of the Patents Act 1970 require infringement suits to be instituted in a court not inferior to a District Court, and Section 7 of the Commercial Courts Act directs that such suits and applications, when filed on the original side of a High Court, be heard by the Commercial Division. Since the abolition of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board by the Tribunals Reforms Act 2021, the Delhi High Court has additionally organised this work through a dedicated Intellectual Property Rights Division governed by rules notified in 2022.

Where do arbitration applications go?

Where the subject matter of an arbitration is a commercial dispute of specified value, Section 10 routes the work by the character of the arbitration rather than the nature of the application. In an international commercial arbitration, all applications and appeals under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996 filed in a High Court go to the Commercial Division. In a domestic arbitration, applications and appeals filed on the original side of a High Court go to the Commercial Division, while those that would ordinarily lie before a principal civil court of original jurisdiction in a district go to the Commercial Court exercising territorial jurisdiction over that arbitration.

Applied to Delhi, and read with Section 12(2), the working position is that a Section 34 challenge or a Section 9 interim measures application in a domestic arbitration goes to the Commercial Division where the aggregate of claim and counter-claim exceeds INR 2 crore, and to the district Commercial Court in the INR 3 lakh to INR 2 crore band. In international commercial arbitration the High Court is the court in any event.

Do you have to mediate before filing?

Section 12A provides that a suit which does not contemplate any urgent interim relief shall not be instituted unless the plaintiff exhausts the remedy of pre-institution mediation in the manner prescribed, and permits the Central Government to authorise authorities constituted under the Legal Services Authorities Act 1987 to conduct it. The mediation is to be completed within three months from the date of the application, extendable by a further two months with the consent of the parties, and the period spent is excluded from the computation of limitation under the Limitation Act 1963. A settlement is reduced to writing, signed by the parties and the mediator, and carries the status and effect of an arbitral award on agreed terms under Section 30(4) of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996.

The provision is mandatory rather than directory, so that a plaint filed in breach of it is liable to be rejected under Order VII Rule 11 of the Code, and the defect is not one that can be cured by referring the parties to mediation after institution. The exception for urgent interim relief is therefore the live battleground, and courts examine whether the relief claimed is genuinely urgent or has been dressed up to bypass the mediation window. Pleading an injunction prayer that is never pressed invites an early attack on maintainability and forfeits the limitation exclusion Section 12A would otherwise have given.

The Mediation Act 2023 has since built a general statutory framework for mediation in India, and the current text of Section 12A and the rules made under it should be checked before a filing decision is taken on the strength of the position summarised here.

A worked walkthrough: an unpaid invoice claim of INR 1.8 crore

A Delhi supplier is owed INR 1.62 crore on invoices under a written supply agreement with a company whose registered office is in Gurugram and whose branch office in Delhi issued the purchase orders and took delivery. Contractual interest accrued to the date of the proposed plaint is INR 18 lakh. The agreement names the courts at New Delhi as having exclusive jurisdiction.

1. Is it a commercial dispute? Yes. An agreement for the sale of goods falls within Section 2(1)(c)(xviii), and the transaction is in any event an ordinary transaction between merchants and traders within clause (i).

2. What is the specified value? Under Section 12(1)(a), the money sought to be recovered inclusive of interest to the date of filing: INR 1.62 crore plus INR 18 lakh, that is INR 1.80 crore.

3. Which tier? INR 1.80 crore is not less than INR 3 lakh and does not exceed INR 2 crore, so the suit goes to a Commercial Court at District Judge level, not to the Commercial Division. Had a further INR 25 lakh of interest accrued by the date of institution, the figure would cross INR 2 crore and the forum would shift.

4. Which place? Part of the cause of action arose in Delhi under Section 20(c) of the Code — the purchase orders and delivery — and the exclusive jurisdiction clause confines the parties to New Delhi, a court that independently has jurisdiction. The clause is effective.

5. Is urgent interim relief genuinely required? If there are grounds for attachment before judgment under Order XXXVIII Rule 5, that is pleaded and Section 12A does not bar institution. If not, pre-institution mediation must be exhausted first, and the three-month period is excluded from limitation.

6. Is a statutory alternative better? If the supplier is a registered micro or small enterprise, the reference route before a Facilitation Council under the MSMED Act 2006 may be faster and carries its own interest regime, as worked through in the note on MSMED Act recovery. If the buyer's inability to pay is the real issue rather than a dispute on the debt, the operational creditor's route under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code has a different object, set out in the note on Section 9 demand notices. A commercial suit is a claim on the merits; an insolvency application is not a recovery proceeding.

What changes once the suit is "commercial"?

Section 16 provides that the Code, in its application to a suit in respect of a commercial dispute of specified value, stands amended in the manner specified in the Schedule; that Commercial Courts and Commercial Divisions shall follow the Code as so amended; and that where a High Court rule or a State amendment conflicts with it, the Act prevails. The practical differences are substantial:

• **Statement of truth.** Order VI Rule 15A, inserted by the Schedule, requires every pleading in a commercial dispute to be verified by an affidavit in the form prescribed in the Appendix to the Schedule. An unverified pleading is not one the court will act on.
• **A hard outer limit on the written statement.** Under the provisos substituted into Order V Rule 1 and Order VIII Rule 1, thirty days from service of summons, extendable by the court for reasons recorded in writing and on such costs as it thinks fit, but not beyond one hundred and twenty days from the date of service. On expiry the defendant forfeits the right to file and the court shall not allow the written statement to be taken on record. That outer limit is inflexible: it is not a period of limitation that can be condoned on sufficient cause, the forfeiture operates by force of the amended provision rather than by any exercise of discretion, and neither the plaintiff's consent nor the court's inherent powers can revive the right once the one hundred and twenty days have run.
• **Front-loaded disclosure.** Order XI Rule 1, as substituted, requires the plaintiff to file with the plaint a list and copies of all documents in its power, possession, control or custody pertaining to the suit, whether they support its case or are adverse to it, with a declaration on oath. Documents not disclosed cannot be relied on at trial save with leave of the court. The defendant carries the corresponding obligation with the written statement.
• **Summary judgment.** Order XIII-A allows a claim to be decided without oral evidence where a party has no real prospect of succeeding on or successfully defending the claim and there is no other compelling reason for a trial. It may be applied for at any time after service of summons but not after issues are framed, and by Rule 1(2) it does not apply to a dispute originally filed as a summary suit under Order XXXVII.
• **Case management.** Order XV-A requires the first case management hearing not later than four weeks from the date on which all parties have filed their affidavits of admission and denial of documents. At it the court frames issues, lists witnesses and fixes dates for evidence and arguments, and it is to ensure arguments close not later than six months from that hearing.
• **A deadline on the judgment.** Order XX Rule 1, as amended, requires judgment within ninety days of the conclusion of arguments.
• **Costs follow the event.** The Schedule substitutes Section 35 of the Code so that the unsuccessful party ordinarily pays the successful party's costs, the court retaining discretion, with costs defined to include legal fees and witness expenses.

None of this is optional and none of it can be retro-fitted. A plaint drafted as an ordinary civil plaint and then filed as a commercial suit will fail on disclosure before it fails on merits.

Section 13 appeals: where, and within what time

Section 13 supplies the only appellate route, and it is exhaustive. An appeal from a Commercial Court below the level of a District Judge lies to the Commercial Appellate Court designated under Section 3A, within sixty days. An appeal from a Commercial Court at District Judge level exercising original civil jurisdiction, or from a Commercial Division of a High Court, lies under Section 13(1A) to the Commercial Appellate Division of that High Court, again within sixty days from the date of the judgment or order. In Delhi both tiers therefore converge: an appeal from a district Commercial Court and an appeal from a single Judge of the Commercial Division are both heard by the Commercial Appellate Division of the Delhi High Court.

The proviso to Section 13(1A) restricts interlocutory appeals to those orders specifically enumerated in Order XLIII of the Code as amended by the Schedule, and to orders under Section 37 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act 1996. Section 13(2) closes the remaining doors: notwithstanding any other law or the Letters Patent of a High Court, no appeal lies from any order or decree of a Commercial Division or Commercial Court otherwise than in accordance with the Act. Section 14 directs the Commercial Appellate Court and the Commercial Appellate Division to endeavour to dispose of appeals within six months of the date of filing. Beyond that, the only recourse is a petition for special leave under Article 136 of the Constitution.

Section 21 gives the Act overriding effect over anything inconsistent in any other law. Section 11 marks the boundary from the other side: a Commercial Court or Commercial Division shall not entertain any suit, application or proceeding relating to a commercial dispute in respect of which the jurisdiction of the civil court is expressly or impliedly barred by another law. Disputes committed to the NCLT, to a Debts Recovery Tribunal or to a statutory regulator do not become justiciable in a Commercial Court merely because they are commercial in character. The forum map is set out on the courts and jurisdictions page.

A pre-filing checklist

1. Identify the clause of Section 2(1)(c) relied on and plead it expressly. Do not leave the court to find it.

2. Where the claim touches immovable property, plead and document exclusive commercial user as at the date of filing.

3. Compute the specified value under the correct limb of Section 12 and show the computation in the plaint. For a money claim, close interest at the date of institution and state the cut-off date.

4. Check the figure against the INR 3 lakh floor and, in Delhi, against the INR 2 crore line in Section 5(2) of the Delhi High Court Act 1966.

5. Settle territorial jurisdiction separately under Sections 16 to 20 of the Code and test any exclusive jurisdiction clause against it.

6. Decide honestly whether urgent interim relief is sought. If not, complete Section 12A mediation and file the certificate.

7. Assemble the Order XI disclosure before the plaint is settled, not after, and include the documents that do not help.

8. Verify every pleading by statement of truth in the prescribed form.

9. Diarise the defendant's one hundred and twenty day outer limit from service, and the sixty day appeal period from any adverse judgment or order.

10. Test at the outset whether another forum — a Facilitation Council, an arbitral tribunal under the contract, the NCLT, or a Debts Recovery Tribunal for a secured lender — is the correct route instead.

What happens if the forum is wrong?

Where a commercial suit of specified value is pending before an ordinary civil court, Section 15 provides for its transfer to the Commercial Division or Commercial Court, with an exception where final judgment was reserved before the Commercial Court or Division was constituted. On transfer, the court may hold case management hearings and prescribe fresh timelines.

Where a suit that is not a commercial dispute, or is below the specified value, is filed before a Commercial Court, the plaint is liable to be returned for presentation to the proper court under Order VII Rule 10 of the Code. Limitation is not automatically saved by the mistake, which is why the valuation exercise belongs at the start of the drafting process rather than at the end of it.

For institutional lenders the analysis usually runs the other way: a secured creditor's remedies under SARFAESI and the RDDB Act sit outside the commercial suit framework altogether, a choice addressed in the guide to debt recovery in India and, for banks and non-banking financial companies, on the institutional counsel page.

Broader strategy on running a commercial dispute — interim relief, enforcement, and the choice between litigation and arbitration — is covered in the note on commercial litigation in India; definitions of the terms used above are in the legal glossary; and contract structuring, including jurisdiction and dispute resolution clauses drafted with these thresholds in mind, falls under legal advisory.

This article is general information on the law as it stands and is not legal advice; forum, valuation and limitation in any particular matter turn on its own documents and facts. Queries may be directed through the contact page.