Last updated: 28 September 2026. Counts as of 23 September 2026: every total was re-pulled on that date with the same exact-phrase method as our Bank Litigation Index, so the two posts agree. This update scopes every ranking to the 16 bodies searched, notes State Bank of India’s count from the Bank Litigation Index, and adds a methodology section and sources. Earlier updates corrected errors on NTPC, ONGC and NHAI, moved Air India out of the PSU table (it was sold to the Tata group in 2022), and added the tribunal dockets that eCourtsIndia now indexes.
As of 23 September 2026, Punjab National Bank appears in the most court records among the 16 public sector bodies in this index (2,75,849), followed by Bank of Baroda (2,14,229). State Bank of India, covered in our Bank Litigation Index, has 10,05,874. NHAI leads the non-bank bodies with 37,408 records. These are record counts, not findings of wrongdoing.
Governments, Union and state together, are often called India’s biggest litigant. In April 2022 the then Chief Justice of India, N.V. Ramana, said they account for nearly 50 per cent of cases. That headline hides a more useful fact: the Government does not litigate as one block. It litigates through dozens of public sector undertakings, statutory regulators and quasi-government bodies, each with its own court footprint. On 23 September 2026, Punjab National Bank appeared in 2,75,849 records in the eCourtsIndia index and Bank of Baroda in 2,14,229. The National Highways Authority of India appeared in 37,408, Indian Oil Corporation in 31,138 and the Life Insurance Corporation of India in 28,920. Each number is a snapshot of a particular kind of state load on the courts: loan recovery, land acquisition arbitration, regulatory writs, consumer complaints, tariff appeals.
This post pulls those numbers from the eCourtsIndia litigant search, sorts them into a league table, and explains what the case mix at each entity says about how that part of the Indian state behaves in court.
What this index covers. It covers 16 public sector bodies: two public sector banks (Punjab National Bank and Bank of Baroda); Government companies (Indian Oil, HPCL, GAIL, BPCL, ONGC, NTPC and Coal India); statutory corporations and authorities (LIC, NHAI and the Airports Authority of India); statutory development lenders (SIDBI and NABARD); and two statutory regulators (RBI and SEBI). It does not cover every PSU, so “most” and “largest” in this post mean among these 16. State Bank of India is covered in the Bank Litigation Index, Union ministries in the Ministry Litigation Index, and how long cases take in the Indian Disposal Time Index.
Key takeaways
- Punjab National Bank (2,75,849 records) and Bank of Baroda (2,14,229) lead the 16 bodies in this index, counted on 23 September 2026. State Bank of India, covered in the Bank Litigation Index, has 10,05,874.
- NHAI has the largest non-bank footprint in this index at 37,408 records, and more than half are still pending. Arbitration petitions (7,625) and other arbitration matters (3,006) make up about 28 percent of NHAI’s records.
- Since tribunals and consumer commissions joined the index, some profiles have changed shape: consumer complaints now lead LIC’s case mix, and electricity tariff appeals before APTEL show up for NTPC.
- Air India is no longer a PSU. It was handed over to the Tata group on 27 January 2022, so it now appears as a legacy row, not in the ranking.
- Counts measure appearances in court and tribunal records, not money recovered or lost, and not wrongdoing.
Which public sector bodies appear in the most court records?
Among the 16 bodies in this index, Punjab National Bank and Bank of Baroda appear in the most records (2,75,849 and 2,14,229), far ahead of NHAI at 37,408 and Indian Oil at 31,138. Financial-services bodies dominate; energy and infrastructure bodies follow well behind.
| Rank | Entity | Sector | Records | Pending | Search |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Punjab National Bank | Public sector bank | 2,75,849 | 89,239 (32.4%) | search |
| 2 | Bank of Baroda | Public sector bank | 2,14,229 | 79,895 (37.3%) | search |
| 3 | NHAI | Highways | 37,408 | 20,807 (55.6%) | search |
| 4 | Indian Oil Corporation | Oil refining and marketing | 31,138 | 6,850 (22.0%) | search |
| 5 | LIC of India | Life insurance | 28,920 | 8,256 (28.5%) | search |
| 6 | HPCL | Oil refining and marketing | 18,559 | 3,728 (20.1%) | search |
| 7 | GAIL | Natural gas | 18,312 | 2,757 (15.1%) | search |
| 8 | BPCL | Oil refining and marketing | 16,300 | 3,797 (23.3%) | search |
| 9 | Reserve Bank of India | Central bank and regulator | 14,781 | 4,448 (30.1%) | search |
| 10 | SEBI | Securities regulator | 11,276 (5,758 excl. SEBI’s own orders) | 1,024 (9.1%) | search |
| 11 | NTPC | Power generation | 10,915 | 1,740 (15.9%) | search |
| 12 | Coal India | Coal mining | 10,516 | 1,019 (9.7%) | search |
| 13 | ONGC | Oil and gas exploration | 5,334 | 953 (17.9%) | search |
| 14 | SIDBI | MSME finance | 3,340 | 1,034 (31.0%) | search |
| 15 | Airports Authority of India | Airports | 3,092 | 775 (25.1%) | search |
| 16 | NABARD | Agri and rural finance | 324 | 78 (24.1%) | search |
Figures come from one faceted API search per body, run on 23 September 2026 (see Methodology and limitations). The search links open the free litigant search, which matches names more broadly and can show a lower, capped total for very large names, so its number may differ. See how the litigant search works.
Not in this table: State Bank of India. The Bank Litigation Index, using the same method on the same day, counts it in 10,05,874 records, 2,83,478 of them pending. That is more than any body in this table.
Legacy row, not ranked: Air India, 6,553 records (1,752 pending). Air India was a government company until its sale to the Tata group was completed on 27 January 2022. Most of its docket is older service, pension and consumer litigation.
Two method notes. First, these are “at least” figures: the search matches the entity’s name as a phrase, so records where the name is abbreviated or misspelt are not counted. ONGC shows the effect clearly. The phrase “ONGC” returns 5,334 records while “Oil and Natural Gas Corporation” returns 2,889, and the two overlap, so we use the larger. Second, the totals are not comparable with the April 2026 version of this post, which used a different query that could cap large totals. That is why PNB rose from 1,77,274 then to 2,75,849 now: the method changed, not the docket.
Why do PNB and Bank of Baroda have the largest dockets in this index?
Punjab National Bank is named in 2,75,849 records, of which 89,239 are pending. It is the petitioner in about 75.3 percent of its appearances. Bank of Baroda is named in 2,14,229, with 79,895 pending and a petitioner share of about 76.7 percent. Both lead with civil suits, and both carry large Debts Recovery Tribunal dockets. The full breakdown, including the case-type and state detail, is in our Bank Litigation Index, which uses exactly the same method and date. That index also covers State Bank of India, at 10,05,874 records.
The contrast with private banks is the petitioner share. HDFC Bank is the petitioner in 97.5 percent of its appearances, and ICICI Bank and Axis Bank in about 89 percent, against 83.6 percent for State Bank of India (Bank Litigation Index, same date). PNB and Bank of Baroda end up as respondents roughly one time in four, and SBI about one time in six. The data cannot show why, but one plausible reason is the loan book. Corporate loan books can involve larger disputes, more challenges to SARFAESI action and more writ petitions from borrowers, and each of those routes puts the bank in the respondent column.
Recovery litigation for both banks also runs through the tribunals. Original applications before the Debts Recovery Tribunals and insolvency petitions before the NCLT now sit in the same search as the courts. Our guides to DRT and DRAT case status and NCLT and NCLAT case status show how to pull those dockets on their own, and The NCLT Scorecard covers the insolvency side.
For a PSU bank board, the useful metric is not the absolute count but the trend in petitioner share. A steady fall can point to more counter-litigation or more procedural losses; a sharp rise can mean the recovery machine is filing faster than the legal team can follow through.
Why does NHAI have so many arbitration cases?
NHAI’s 37,408 records are the largest non-bank footprint in this index. 20,807 of them, about 56 percent, are still pending, the highest pending share in the table. The top case types are civil miscellaneous applications (7,676), arbitration petitions (7,625) and other arbitration matters (3,006), followed by first appeals. Arbitration petitions and other arbitration matters together make up about 28 percent of NHAI’s records.
The law explains much of this. Under Section 3G(5) of the National Highways Act, 1956, if either side does not accept the land compensation fixed by the competent authority, an arbitrator appointed by the Central Government decides it. Claims under highway construction contracts also often go to arbitration, and challenges to those awards come back to the courts.
Maharashtra (10,029), Karnataka (6,819) and Punjab (6,550) are the top three states, followed by Tamil Nadu and Delhi. An earlier version of this post named Haryana among the top three and tied it to specific expressway projects; the current data does not support that, and we have removed it. For an infrastructure analyst, NHAI’s arbitration count is one rough signal of how much friction highway land acquisition is generating, and it can be re-pulled at each refresh.
Oil and gas PSUs in court: IOC, HPCL, GAIL, BPCL and ONGC
- Indian Oil Corporation: 31,138
- HPCL: 18,559
- GAIL: 18,312
- BPCL: 16,300
- ONGC: 5,334
Indian Oil is the largest of the five, in line with its size as a fuel marketer. Its docket is writ-heavy: 6,762 civil writ petitions and 3,130 writ appeals lead the case mix, well ahead of civil suits (1,736). The leading states are Uttar Pradesh (3,061), Gujarat (2,826) and Maharashtra (2,578).
HPCL (18,559) and BPCL (16,300) have similar, writ-led profiles, with Maharashtra the top state for both (3,498 and 3,473). HPCL’s second state is Punjab (2,211) and BPCL’s is Tamil Nadu (1,380). An earlier version linked HPCL’s Punjab count to a specific highway corridor; we have no data to support that and have removed it.
GAIL’s 18,312 records are concentrated in Gujarat, which accounts for 11,386, about 62 percent. Civil miscellaneous appeals lead (7,325), followed by special civil applications (2,927), the Gujarat High Court’s writ format. The pattern is consistent with land and right-of-use compensation disputes along gas pipeline routes, though the case-type data alone cannot confirm the subject of each file.
ONGC shows 5,334 records under its short name, the smallest of the five. Records that use only the full name, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, are not added in, so ONGC’s full footprint is likely larger than this table shows. Gujarat accounts for 3,502, about two-thirds. That is consistent with ONGC’s large onshore operations in Gujarat, around Ankleshwar, Mehsana and Ahmedabad. An earlier version called Gujarat ONGC’s “home state” and linked it to Mumbai High; both were wrong. ONGC’s registered office is in New Delhi, and Mumbai High is an offshore field off the Maharashtra coast. Many of ONGC’s large contract disputes also go to arbitration outside the court system.
Power and coal: NTPC and Coal India
NTPC’s 10,915 records are led by civil miscellaneous applications (2,559) and, now that tribunals are indexed, 1,082 appeals before the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL), the forum where tariff and power purchase disputes are heard. Our guide to TDSAT and APTEL case status shows how to follow those appeals. Himachal Pradesh leads the state tags with 3,554 records. One possible source is Koldam, NTPC’s 800 MW hydro station on the Sutlej in Bilaspur district, though the case-type data alone cannot confirm this. An earlier version of this post also attributed the Rampur and Parbati projects to NTPC. That was wrong: Rampur is an SJVN project and Parbati belongs to NHPC.
Coal India’s 10,516 records are dominated by writs (2,404 original-side writ petitions, 2,378 civil writ petitions and 2,368 writ appeals). West Bengal accounts for 5,400, just over half, followed by Jharkhand (1,091). The name match picks up Coal India itself and records where its name appears alongside a subsidiary, so the coalfield subsidiaries’ full dockets are larger. Only 1,019 of Coal India’s records are pending, one of the lowest shares in the table.
Insurance and development finance: LIC, SIDBI and NABARD
LIC’s 28,920 records look different now that consumer commissions are indexed. The largest single case type is consumer complaints on the e-Jagriti system (6,648), with a further 2,219 consumer appeals, ahead of civil writ petitions (3,037). These are typically policyholder disputes over claims and payouts. Consumer complaints and appeals together make up about 31 percent of LIC’s records. Maharashtra (3,983), Delhi (2,588) and Telangana (2,477) lead. Our guide to consumer commission case status explains how to follow a complaint.
SIDBI’s total has grown to 3,340 records, mainly because tribunal dockets are now included: 696 original applications before the Debts Recovery Tribunals, 242 company petitions and 226 interlocutory applications under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. NABARD, a wholesale lender with little direct retail exposure, remains the smallest entry at 324, with Supreme Court special leave petitions its largest case type.
How often do RBI and SEBI appear in court records?
The Reserve Bank of India appears in 14,781 records. Civil writ petitions make up 6,424, about 43 percent. RBI is named in writs that question banking regulation circulars, NBFC licensing decisions and depositor-protection actions. Tamil Nadu (2,036), Maharashtra (1,618) and Rajasthan (1,248) lead the state tags.
SEBI appears in 11,276 records, but the total needs unpacking. About 7,100 of them sit in the tribunal and regulator layer. They include 4,739 of SEBI’s own adjudication orders and 779 whole-time member orders, which the index carries as a separate source, and 1,157 appeals before the Securities Appellate Tribunal. In the Supreme Court, High Courts and district courts alone, SEBI appears in 4,151 records. Leaving out SEBI’s own orders, where SEBI is the decision-maker rather than a party, SEBI appears in 5,758 records. Maharashtra leads with 3,194 state-tagged records, consistent with SEBI’s Mumbai headquarters and the SAT bench there. Appeals before the Securities Appellate Tribunal can be followed through our SAT case status guide.
Smaller statutory regulators, including IRDAI, TRAI, FSSAI, the Competition Commission of India and PFRDA, have smaller footprints, and the same litigant search works for each. How a single legal instrument can generate a mass docket is covered in our piece on tracking Section 138 cheque bounce cases with the API.
Airports Authority of India and the Air India legacy
The Airports Authority of India appears in 3,092 records, led by civil writ petitions (925), often land, lease and airport-zoning challenges. Delhi (644) and Maharashtra (562) lead, followed by Tamil Nadu (492).
Air India’s 6,553 records are the residue of its years as a government company plus litigation since privatisation: consumer complaints (1,851) and civil writ petitions (1,558) lead, with Maharashtra and Delhi the main states. Because it has been a Tata group company since January 2022, we no longer rank it as a PSU.
What do PSU case counts not tell you?
The counts are appearances in court and tribunal records. They do not equal money recovered, penalties collected or projects completed. A single PNB civil suit might be for a ₹5 lakh personal loan or a ₹500 crore corporate facility. A single NHAI arbitration might involve a small farm plot or a large construction contract. The count measures process volume, not value.
Coverage is now much wider than in April. eCourtsIndia indexes the Supreme Court, all 25 High Courts, district and taluka courts that publish on the eCourts network in all 36 states and Union Territories, and 18 tribunal and commission types (as of September 2026), including the Debts Recovery Tribunals, NCLT, APTEL, SAT, the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal and consumer commissions on e-Jagriti. Those tribunal records are included in the totals above. Private and international arbitrations, where many large PSU contracts are fought, sit outside the index entirely.
How journalists, regulators and boards can use this index
For a financial journalist, the league table is a repeatable scoreboard. Re-run the same sixteen searches at regular intervals and you have a dataset that tracks PSU bank recovery, the flow of land acquisition disputes onto NHAI’s docket, regulatory writs against RBI and SEBI, and consumer disputes against LIC.
For a regulator, each entity’s case mix is a useful signal of where disputes arise. A bank whose docket is almost all recovery suits has a very different operational profile from one with a large share of writ petitions against it. For a PSU board, the running metrics are petitioner share, year-on-year filings growth and case-type concentration. The same approach works for private groups, as our Conglomerate Litigation Map shows, and for government ministries, covered in the Ministry Litigation Index. The Maharashtra Litigation Census applies it to one state’s government bodies.
For a company dealing with a PSU as a customer, supplier or counterparty, the entity-level view is also due diligence. Our guide on how to find all cases against a company walks through the search. LegalCheck produces a court-record matching report on a person or company. It is not an identity certificate, a police clearance certificate or legal advice. Our guide to background checks against court cases explains the process. To follow specific matters, add them to the dashboard and turn on WhatsApp and email case alerts; tracking costs ₹5 per case per month (as of September 2026).
Methodology and limitations
Every total in the table comes from one call per entity, run on 23 September 2026: search_cases(litigants="<entity name>", nameMatchMode="phrase", facets="caseStatus,caseType,stateCode"). With facets requested, the totals are exact counts; results-only queries can report a capped total for very large names. The pending figure is the PENDING bucket of the status facet. Bank rows are taken from the Bank Litigation Index, which used the same call on the same day.
- Dataset: court and tribunal records in eCourtsIndia’s index, from the Supreme Court, all 25 High Courts, district and taluka courts that publish on the eCourts network, and 18 tribunal and commission types (as of September 2026). SEBI’s own adjudication and whole-time member orders are carried as a separate source and are included in SEBI’s total of 11,276.
- Sample: 16 public sector bodies, one search per body. The index does not cover every PSU; State Bank of India is reported in the Bank Litigation Index.
- Data as of: records read on 23 September 2026.
- Definitions: a record is one case record in which the body’s name appears as a party; pending is the PENDING bucket of the status facet; petitioner share is the share of a bank’s appearances in which it is the petitioner. Case-type labels are each court’s own and are not harmonised.
- Matching: exact-phrase match on one name per body, the name shown in each row’s search link (for example “national highways authority of india”, “ongc”, “gail” and “ntpc”). Short and full names were not combined, so bodies searched under one form only, such as ONGC, GAIL and NTPC, may be undercounted. Phrase matching may also catch look-alike names, such as staff associations.
- Limitations: covers only courts that publish on eCourts and the tribunals listed above; private and international arbitrations are excluded; records can lag the court’s own register; party names are not verified identities; errors in source data carry through.
- Reproduce it: run the
search_casescall above for each body. The linked litigant search matches more broadly and can show a different, capped total. For how records are collected, see how we collect and index court data.
Anyone can repeat the method on the free litigant search, through the eCourtsIndia API (self-serve, 23 endpoints, ₹200 of free credits on signup, as of September 2026) or through the MCP server from an assistant such as Claude. More data stories are collected in our Court Data Stories section. If you want a body added at the next refresh, or spot an error, write to us at admin@ecourtsindia.com.
A pending case is not a finding of wrongdoing. The bodies in this index appear in these records as petitioners, respondents or other parties, and the counts include all roles. Large companies and government bodies are parties to many cases because of the scale of their operations and public functions. Being named in a court record does not mean a person or company did anything wrong.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which public sector body appears in the most court records in India?
Among the 16 public sector bodies in this index, Punjab National Bank appears in the most records: 2,75,849 on 23 September 2026, followed by Bank of Baroda at 2,14,229. State Bank of India, covered in our Bank Litigation Index, has 10,05,874. The index does not cover every PSU, so these are the leaders among the bodies searched, not the whole public sector. You can run your own search on the free litigant search at ecourtsindia.com/litigant.
Why does NHAI have so many court cases?
The National Highways Authority of India appeared in 37,408 records on 23 September 2026, the largest non-bank footprint in this index, and 20,807 of them (about 56 percent) were pending. Arbitration petitions (7,625) and other arbitration matters (3,006) make up about 28 percent. Under the National Highways Act, 1956, if either side disputes the land compensation fixed by the competent authority, an arbitrator decides it, and challenges to those awards come back to the courts. Look up any entity through case search on eCourtsIndia.
Which regulator is named in the most court cases?
Of the two regulators in this index, the Reserve Bank of India: 14,781 records on 23 September 2026, about 43 percent of them civil writ petitions. SEBI appeared in 11,276 records, but 5,518 of those are SEBI’s own adjudication and whole-time member orders, where SEBI is the decision-maker. Leaving those out, SEBI appears in 5,758 records, including 1,157 appeals before the Securities Appellate Tribunal. Research the benches hearing these matters with judge lookup.
Are public sector banks taken to court more often than private banks?
Relative to their own dockets, yes. On 23 September 2026 Punjab National Bank was the respondent in 24.7 percent of its records, Bank of Baroda in 23.3 percent and State Bank of India in 16.4 percent. HDFC Bank was the respondent in 2.5 percent, Kotak Mahindra Bank in 3.7 percent and ICICI Bank in 11.3 percent. In most bank records the bank itself is the petitioner. See the Bank Litigation Index for the full comparison.
What does a PSU case count measure?
It counts court and tribunal records in which a body is named as a party, matched by name. It does not measure money at stake, amounts recovered, penalties or outcomes. A single PNB suit could involve a small personal loan or a large corporate facility. The totals include tribunals such as the Debts Recovery Tribunals, NCLT, APTEL and consumer commissions, but not private or international arbitration. Being named in a case, including a pending one, does not mean a body did anything wrong. For programmatic access, see the eCourtsIndia API.
Is eCourtsIndia the official eCourts website?
No. eCourtsIndia is a private legal-technology platform. It is not affiliated with, associated with, or endorsed by the Government of India, the Supreme Court of India or its e-Committee, or any court. Official case information is published on ecourts.gov.in. eCourtsIndia indexes those public records so they can be searched in one place.
Sources
- e-Committee, Supreme Court of India: eCourts Services, the official portal for court case information. Checked 28 September 2026.
- Securities Appellate Tribunal: about the tribunal (appeals against SEBI orders). Checked 28 September 2026.
- Appellate Tribunal for Electricity: about the tribunal (appeals under the Electricity Act, 2003). Checked 28 September 2026.
- The Tribune (PTI): CJI terms govts as biggest litigants (30 April 2022). Checked 28 September 2026.
- IndiaCode by eCourtsIndia: National Highways Act, 1956, Section 3G (compensation and arbitration). Checked 28 September 2026.
- eCourtsIndia: Bank Litigation Index (SBI, PNB and Bank of Baroda counts and petitioner shares) (counts as of 23 September 2026). Checked 28 September 2026.
- eCourtsIndia: Ministry Litigation Index (counts as of 23 September 2026). Checked 28 September 2026.
- eCourtsIndia: litigant search. Checked 28 September 2026.