Documentation

SLP Drafting Guide

A complete, step-by-step guide to using SLP Craft for generating Supreme Court Special Leave Petitions. This guide covers every stage of the process, the legal requirements at each stage, and how to get the best results.

What is a Special Leave Petition?

A Special Leave Petition (SLP) is an extraordinary remedy under Article 136 of the Constitution of India, which empowers the Supreme Court to grant special leave to appeal from any judgment, decree, determination, sentence or order passed by any court or tribunal in India (except courts constituted under any law relating to the Armed Forces).

The SLP is the standard mechanism for bringing a matter from a High Court or Tribunal to the Supreme Court. It is governed by Order XXI (Civil) / Order XXII (Criminal) of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013 and the Practice & Procedure Manual 2017.

Key legal anchorArticle 136, Constitution of India — "Notwithstanding anything in this Chapter, the Supreme Court may, in its discretion, grant special leave to appeal from any judgment, decree, determination, sentence or order in any cause or matter passed or made by any court or tribunal in the territory of India."

SLP (Civil) vs SLP (Criminal)

SLP (Civil)

Article 136 r/w Order XXI Rule 1

Service matters
Property and eviction disputes
Company law, tax, commercial
Constitutional and administrative law
NCLAT, NGT, ITAT, TDSAT orders

SLP (Criminal)

Article 136 r/w Order XXII Rule 1

Criminal appeals against conviction
Bail and anticipatory bail
Quashing of FIR / chargesheet
Criminal revision / revisional jurisdiction
Section 482 CrPC orders of HC

Before You Start

Gather the following before opening the wizard:

Impugned Order (mandatory)— The final HC/Tribunal order you are challenging — as a PDF (scanned is fine).
Original Petition (mandatory)— The petition/application filed before the HC/Tribunal.
Case title— As it appears in the HC records — e.g., "Ram Prasad & Ors. v. State of UP & Anr."
Judges' names— Full names and designations of all judges who signed the order (from the CORAM/PRESENT section).
Date of impugned order— For limitation calculation. SLP must be filed within 90 days (Art. 136 r/w Limitation Act).
Reply and rejoinder (optional)— Include if available — improves the Grounds section significantly.

Limitation periodAn SLP must ordinarily be filed within 90 days of the impugned order (Article 136 read with Schedule to Limitation Act 1963, Art. 113). If the order is older, the AI will automatically draft a Misc. Application for Condonation of Delay and include it in the package. You must disclose the true date and reasons for delay in the Delay Condonation affidavit.

1Case Details

The case details form the header of every section of the SLP — the Synopsis, the Listing Proforma, the Petition itself, and all affidavits. Enter them exactly as they appear in the impugned order.

Type of SLPRequired

Civil for non-criminal matters; Criminal for offences, bail, criminal appeals.

Order XXI (Civil) / Order XXII (Criminal), SC Rules 2013

High Court / TribunalRequired

Select from the dropdown. Look at the letterhead of the impugned order — "IN THE HIGH COURT OF [STATE] AT [SEAT]". For a Tribunal: "NATIONAL COMPANY LAW APPELLATE TRIBUNAL" etc.

SC Rules 2013, Order XXI Rule 4(1)(a)

Names of JudgesRequired

Full name and designation as in the CORAM/PRESENT section. For a Division Bench: "Hon'ble Mr. Justice [X] and Hon'ble Ms. Justice [Y]". Check the top of the impugned order.

Listing Proforma (SCI), Para (l)

Case TitleRequired

The case as registered at the HC — exactly as shown on the order. Include "& Ors." / "& Anr." if there are multiple parties.

Form 28, SC Rules 2013

Date of Impugned OrderRequired

The date the HC/Tribunal signed/pronounced the order. This triggers the limitation calculation. The AI flags if delay condonation is needed.

Limitation Act 1963, Art. 113

2Uploading Documents

Upload the court documents for the AI to read. The AI reads every page, OCRs scanned text, translates Indian-language content, and uses all of it to generate the SLP sections.

Scanned PDFs and Indian languages are supportedGoogle Cloud Vision OCR handles scanned court orders — including handwritten margin notes. Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, Bengali, Gujarati, Odia, Malayalam, Punjabi, and Assamese are automatically detected and translated to English for the AI generation step.

Document roles

Impugned OrderMandatory

The HC/Tribunal order you are challenging. The entire SLP is built around this document — the Synopsis, List of Dates, Questions of Law, and Grounds are all derived from it.

Petition / ApplicationMandatory

The original petition filed before the HC. Used to identify the relief originally sought, the facts narrated, and the grounds raised. The AI compares this against the order to draft the Grounds.

Reply / Counter AffidavitRecommended

The Respondent's reply. Including this allows the AI to anticipate the Respondent's arguments and frame Grounds that pre-empt them.

Rejoinder AffidavitOptional

Your rejoinder to the reply. Useful for complex matters where facts are disputed.

Additional DocumentsOptional

Other affidavits, Interlocutory Applications, lower court orders, or annexures that are part of the High Court record. Up to 7 additional documents.

File requirements

• Format: PDF only (including scanned PDFs)
• Maximum size: 50 MB per file
• Text PDFs and scanned PDFs are both supported
• Password-protected PDFs are not supported — remove protection before uploading

3AI Generation

After you click "Generate", the 8-stage pipeline begins. You can watch the live progress on the job page. Average generation time is 8–12 minutes depending on document size and language.

Ingest

Documents are received, checksummed, and queued.

Extract

Text extraction from digital PDFs using PyMuPDF.

OCR

Google Cloud Vision OCR on scanned pages. Tesseract fallback.

Translate

Google Cloud Translation API — Indian languages → English.

Embed

Document chunks embedded via sentence-transformers and stored in pgvector for RAG retrieval.

Generate

Claude AI generates each SLP section (Synopsis, List of Dates, Questions of Law, Grounds, Prayer, Affidavit, Index, Proforma) using RAG over SC Rules 2013, Practice Manual 2017, and real filed SLPs.

Format

DOCX formatted in SC paper-book style. Yellow highlights applied to uncertain fields.

Package

Final DOCX + AI Transparency Report + Annexure I assembled into a ZIP.

What the AI generates

A complete SLP package includes:

Cover page & Index

Synopsis (with List of Dates)

Questions of Law

Grounds

Prayer

Interim Relief application

Verification affidavit

Listing Proforma

Delay Condonation MA (if needed)

Annexure I — AI Disclosure Note (voluntary)

AI Transparency Report

HITL Review (Required by this tool)

This step is required before downloadThis tool requires an advocate to complete a Human-in-the-Loop review of every AI-generated legal document before it is unlocked for download. The Supreme Court's AI Committee has not yet notified official rules on AI-assisted drafting — this checklist is our own best-practice gate, and it certifies that you have verified the AI's output before relying on it.

After generation, the review panel presents a 10-point checklist. You must confirm each item before the download is unlocked.

HITL Checklist items

1All case citations have been independently verified
2The case title and party names are correct
3The names and designations of judges are accurate
4The date of the impugned order is correct
5All yellow-highlighted fields have been reviewed and corrected
6The Questions of Law accurately reflect the legal issues
7The Grounds are factually accurate and not fabricated
8The Prayer is appropriate and within Article 136 jurisdiction
9The limitation period has been assessed (or delay condonation included)
10I accept responsibility for the contents as the supervising advocate

Yellow highlights = where to focusAny field the AI was uncertain about is highlighted in yellow in the DOCX. These are the priority review areas — they require your manual verification before filing. The AI never silently fabricates; it highlights instead.

Downloading & Filing

Once the HITL checklist is complete, the download button unlocks. You receive a ZIP file containing:

SLP_[CaseTitle]_Draft.docx — the main SLP in DOCX format
Annexure_I_AI_Disclosure.docx — a voluntary AI Disclosure Note
AI_Transparency_Report.pdf — audit trail of AI generation

Filing with the AI Disclosure NoteThe Supreme Court's AI Committee has not yet notified rules requiring AI-assisted filings to carry a specific disclosure document. SLP Craft auto-generates Annexure I as a voluntary AI Disclosure Note anyway, so you have the option to sign and file it as a matter of professional transparency. Check with your Bar or the relevant Court for the latest guidance before filing.

Your Documents & Privacy

SLP Craft takes data privacy seriously. Your court documents contain sensitive personal, financial, and legal information. Here is exactly what happens to your uploaded files:

During generation

Your PDFs are stored in Supabase encrypted storage (AES-256 at rest, TLS 1.3 in transit) and used solely for this SLP generation job. They are NOT used to train any AI model.

After HITL review confirmation

Once you confirm the HITL checklist and click "Delete my uploads", your source PDFs are permanently deleted from Supabase Storage within 24 hours. This is our recommended workflow.

30-day auto-delete

If you do not manually delete your uploads, they are automatically deleted after 30 days by default. The generated DOCX output remains available in your account for 90 days.

Firm plan — custom policy

Firm plan subscribers can configure a custom data retention and deletion policy, including immediate deletion upon download.

Legal basis for deletion policyDPDPA 2023, Section 8(7) — data fiduciary shall delete personal data as soon as the purpose for processing is served. No Supreme Court AI Committee rules on retention of AI-generation source documents have been notified yet; our 30-day default and immediate-delete option are a voluntary best practice pending such rules.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I edit the generated SLP before filing?

Yes — and you must. The generated DOCX is a starting draft. You are expected to review, correct all yellow highlights, add party-specific details, and apply your professional judgment before filing. This is the Human-in-the-Loop requirement.

What if my document is in Hindi or Tamil?

Upload it as-is. The OCR engine detects the language, runs OCR, and translates to English automatically before the AI generation step. Output is always in English (the language of the Supreme Court).

Will the AI fabricate citations?

No. The system uses a strict anti-fabrication policy: it only cites case law that exists in the knowledge base (SC Rules 2013, Practice Manual 2017, real filed SLPs). Uncertain fields are highlighted in yellow — never fabricated.

How is one "credit" defined?

One credit = one complete SLP package: all sections (Synopsis, List of Dates, Questions of Law, Grounds, Prayer, Affidavit, Index, Proforma) + Annexure I + AI Transparency Report. A failed generation that produces no output does not consume a credit.

Do I need approval from the SCI AI Committee?

The Supreme Court's AI Committee has not yet notified rules on AI-assisted drafting, so there is no formal approval process to point to today. Check with your Bar or the relevant Court before filing AI-assisted documents, and watch for future circulars from the SCI AI Committee. We generate a voluntary AI Disclosure Note (Annexure I) that you can use to support that conversation.

Can I regenerate an SLP with additional documents?

Yes — upload additional documents and re-run the generation. Each regeneration consumes one credit. Your previous DOCX outputs are preserved in your account.

Is this a draft or a filing-ready document?

It is an advanced first draft. The generated DOCX is ready for your review and editing. After completing the HITL checklist and signing Annexure I, it is suitable for conversion to PDF and filing at the SCI registry. You remain the responsible advocate.

Ready to draft?

Start your first SLP now

1 free SLP credit included. No credit card required.

Draft Your First SLP

Official References