Along with the text, you may want to refer to the chart at the bottom of the page.

The Indian Judiciary administers a common law system of legal jurisdiction. This involves customs, precedents and legislation, all codifying the law of the land. It has in fact, inherited the legacy of the legal system established by the then colonial powers and the princely states since the mid-19th century, and has partly retained characteristics of practices from the ancient and medieval times.

There are various levels of judiciary in India – different types of courts, each with varying powers depending on the tier and jurisdiction bestowed upon them. They form a strict hierarchy of importance, in line with the order of the courts in which they sit, with the Supreme Court of India at the top, followed by High Courts of respective states with district judges sitting in District Courts and Magistrates of Second Class and Civil Judge (Junior Division) at the bottom.

The Supreme Court is the highest court of the country or nation, which is established by the Constitution. Primarily, it is an appellate court which takes up appeals against judgments of the High Courts of the states and territories. However, it also takes writ petitions in cases of serious human rights violations or any petition filed under Article 32 which is the right to constitutional remedies or if a case involves a serious issue that needs immediate resolution.

High courts have jurisdiction over a state, a union territory or a group of states and union territories. Below the High Courts are a hierarchy of subordinate courts such as the civil courts, family courts, criminal courts and various other district courts. High courts are instituted as constitutional courts.

District Courts administer justice in India at a district level. These courts are under administrative control of the High Court of the State to which the district concerned belongs.

Besides these, there are the Subordinate Courts. They are also known as village courts, Lok Adalat (people's court) or Nyaya panchayat (justice of the villages), compose a system of alternative dispute resolution. In 1984 the Law Commission recommended to create Nyaya Panchayats in rural areas with laymen ("having educational attainments"). The 2008 Gram Nyayalayas Act had foreseen 5,000 mobile courts in the country for judging petty civil (property cases) and criminal (up to 2 years of prison) cases. However, the Act has not been enforced properly, with only 151 functional Gram Nyayalayas in the country (as of May 2012) against a target of 5000 such courts.

The E-courts project was established in the year 2005. According to the project, all the courts including taluka courts will get computerised. As per the project in 2008, all the District courts were initialised under the project. In 2010, all the District court were computerised. The entry of back log case has started. The IT department had one system officer and two system assistants in each court. They initiated the services in the Supreme Court in June 2011. The case lists and the judgements of most district courts were available in http://lobis.nic.in. in http://judis.nic.in is used to connect all High Courts and Supreme Court judgements and cause list. These websites are updated daily by a technical team. Now by and large all the District and Taluka Courts in the country are computerized. Cause list of each of the Court can be seen on http://ecourts.gov.in. Similarly on this site you can check your cases status, your can see judgments and orders. For searching cases status, judgments, or cause lists various search options are given. Besides this http://njdg.ecourts.gov.in is National Judicial Data Grid which gives pendency figures and other relevant information in statistical form.

- extracted from Judiciary of India, Wikipedia as on 10th March 2018

Besides the Civil, Family, and Criminal Courts mentioned above, there are a number of special courts and tribunals established in India to govern specific areas of law. A few such examples include the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal (MACT), Rent Control Tribunal, Railway Claims Tribunal, Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT), Central Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT), Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), Intellectual Property Appellate Tribunal (IPAT), National Green Tribunal (NGT), etc.

- extracted from Chapter 6, Unit 4, Legal Studies, Class 11, NCERT<i> (source confirmation necessary - check link)

The following chart obtained from here, may help to put things into perspective: