Almost every company that fails a POSH audit fails on the committee, not on the policy. The policy is usually a document somebody downloaded, circulated once and filed. The Internal Committee is where the Act is specific, where the composition is checkable in about four minutes, and where a wrong constitution invalidates everything the committee then does.
The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 turns on one number: ten employees. Below it you still have duties. At or above it you have a committee, a process, a calendar and a filing.
Who the Act covers, and who it does not
The threshold is ten or more employees at a workplace. That count is broader than payroll. Interns, apprentices, probationers, contract staff, consultants, daily wage workers and people engaged through a contractor are all counted, whether or not the employer knows their name and whether or not they draw a salary from this company.
Below ten employees the committee obligation does not apply, but the rest of the Act still does. The employer is required to provide a safe working environment, and a complaint goes instead to the Local Committee constituted by the District Officer in that district. The same route applies where the complaint is against the employer, since a committee reporting to the person complained against is not a forum.
- The complainant must be a woman, since the Act is written that way. Nothing stops an employer extending the same procedure to everyone through its own policy, and many do
- She does not have to be an employee of the company. A visitor, a client, a contractor's staff member or a customer can complain against someone at your workplace
- Domestic workers are covered, through the Local Committee rather than an Internal Committee
- The respondent can be anyone at the workplace, including a client, a vendor or a visitor
Workplace is defined widely, and this is the part people underestimate. It includes any place the employee visits during the course of employment, transport provided by the employer, an offsite, a client site, a conference and the informal continuation of a work event. The 2020 shift to distributed work extended the same logic to online meetings and work chat, which sit inside the definition rather than outside it.
What counts as sexual harassment
The definition in the Act has five limbs, and any one of them is enough.
- Physical contact and advances
- A demand or request for sexual favours
- Sexually coloured remarks
- Showing pornography
- Any other unwelcome physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct of a sexual nature
The Act then adds five circumstances that amount to harassment where they occur in connection with any of the above: an implied or explicit promise of preferential treatment, a threat of detrimental treatment, a threat about present or future employment status, interference with work or creating an intimidating or offensive working environment, and humiliating treatment likely to affect health or safety.
The test is whether the conduct was unwelcome to the person receiving it, not whether the person doing it meant anything by it. That distinction does most of the work in a real inquiry. "It was a joke" is an explanation of intent and it is not an answer to the question the committee has to decide.
Unwelcome is judged from the position of the woman who received the conduct. Intention matters when the committee decides what action to recommend. It does not decide whether the conduct happened or whether it was unwelcome.
Constituting the Internal Committee
This is the clause worth reading twice, because a committee that does not match it can have its findings set aside on that ground alone.
| Role | Requirement | Common error |
|---|---|---|
| Presiding Officer | A woman employed at a senior level at the workplace | Appointing a man, or appointing a junior HR executive because no senior woman was available |
| Employee members | At least two, committed to the cause of women or with legal knowledge or social work experience | One member only, or members chosen purely by seniority |
| External member | One member from an NGO or association committed to the cause of women, or a person familiar with issues of sexual harassment | Skipping this member entirely, which is the single most common failure |
| Gender balance | At least half the total members must be women | A four-member committee with one woman |
| Term | Not more than three years from the date of nomination | A committee constituted in 2019 and never reconstituted |
Where no senior woman is available at that workplace, the Presiding Officer is nominated from another office or unit of the same employer, and only if that fails may she be nominated from another workplace of the same employer or from a different organisation. The Act does not permit a man in the chair.
The external member is paid a fee by the employer, and that fee is prescribed, so this is a budget line rather than a favour. Committee members may be removed for breaching confidentiality, for being convicted of an offence, for an adverse finding in a disciplinary proceeding, or for abusing the position.
One committee per workplace. A company with offices in four cities needs four committees, not one committee in the head office covering everybody. Where a location is too small to staff one, that location falls to the Local Committee, and employees there need to be told so rather than left to find out at the worst moment.
The complaint, and the clock that starts with it
A written complaint, six copies with supporting documents and the names of witnesses, filed within three months of the incident. Where there is a series of incidents, the three months run from the last one. The committee may extend the limit by a further three months where it records in writing that circumstances prevented an earlier complaint.
Where the woman is unable to complain herself because of physical or mental incapacity or death, a relative, friend, co-worker, a National or State Women's Commission officer, or a person with knowledge of the incident may complain on her behalf with written consent where consent can be given.
If a complaint arrives in writing but not in the prescribed form, the committee helps put it in order rather than rejecting it. A refusal on a formatting point is not a defensible act by a body whose function is redressal.
| Stage | Time limit | Who it binds |
|---|---|---|
| Filing the complaint | Within 3 months of the incident or the last incident | The complainant |
| Extension of the filing limit | A further 3 months, with reasons recorded in writing | The committee |
| Notice of the complaint to the respondent | Within 7 working days of receiving it | The committee |
| Respondent's reply with documents | Within 10 working days of receiving the notice | The respondent |
| Completing the inquiry | Within 90 days | The committee |
| Submitting the inquiry report | Within 10 days of completing the inquiry | The committee |
| Acting on the recommendations | Within 60 days of receiving the report | The employer |
| Appeal against the recommendations | Within 90 days | Either party |
Ninety days is the outer limit, not a target. A committee that takes eighty-nine days to hear a complaint about a manager the complainant still reports to has technically complied and practically failed.
Conciliation, and its limits
Before starting an inquiry the committee may attempt to settle the matter through conciliation, but only if the complainant requests it. The committee cannot propose conciliation on its own, and an employer that treats conciliation as the preferred route because it avoids a finding has misread the section.
No monetary settlement may be made the basis of a conciliation. Where a settlement is reached, the committee records it, sends it to the employer, and no further inquiry is conducted. If the respondent then fails to honour the settlement, the complainant can go back to the committee and the inquiry proceeds.
The inquiry itself
The committee has the powers of a civil court for summoning witnesses and requiring documents. It is not a court, and the standard it applies is the balance of probabilities rather than the criminal standard. Both parties get a hearing, both see the material relied on, and neither may bring a lawyer to represent them in the proceeding.
Where either party fails to attend three consecutive hearings without sufficient cause, the committee may terminate the proceeding or decide ex parte, after giving fifteen days of written notice.
If the allegation is proved, the committee recommends action under the service rules, which can run from a written apology, warning or censure through withholding a promotion or increment to termination. It may also recommend that a sum be deducted from the respondent's salary and paid to the complainant, and the amount takes account of her mental trauma, the loss in career opportunity, her medical expenses and the respondent's income and financial status.
If the allegation is not proved, the committee recommends no action. That is a different thing from a false complaint, and the Act says so directly: an inability to substantiate a complaint or provide adequate proof does not attract action against the complainant. Malice has to be established through a separate inquiry before anything can be recommended, and a witness who gives false evidence is treated the same way.
Confidentiality is a statutory obligation under Section 16 rather than an internal courtesy. The contents of the complaint, the identity of the complainant, the respondent and the witnesses, and the recommendations may not be published or made known to the public or the press. The penalty for breaching it is ₹5,000, recovered from the person who breached it.
Interim relief while an inquiry is running
On the complainant's written request, the committee may recommend interim measures during the inquiry. This is where most of the practical protection sits, and it is the part employers most often forget to offer.
- Transferring the complainant or the respondent to another workplace
- Granting the complainant leave of up to three months, over and above her normal leave entitlement
- Restraining the respondent from reporting on her work performance or writing her confidential report, with that duty moved to someone else
- Any other relief that may be prescribed
Note the direction of travel in the first item. Moving the complainant away from her team, her work and her manager because someone else is under inquiry is a familiar reflex and a poor one. Where a move is needed, the respondent is usually the one who should move.
What the employer must do beyond the committee
The Act lists the employer's duties separately from the committee's, and an audit checks both.
- Provide a safe working environment, including safety from anyone the employee comes into contact with at the workplace
- Display the penal consequences of sexual harassment and the composition of the Internal Committee at a conspicuous place in the workplace
- Organise workshops and awareness programmes for employees at regular intervals
- Organise orientation programmes for committee members, so a committee that has never been trained is not the one hearing a first complaint
- Provide the facilities the committee needs to conduct an inquiry, including space and the fee for the external member
- Assist the complainant if she chooses to file a criminal complaint under the Indian Penal Code or its successor, and treat sexual harassment as misconduct under the service rules
- Monitor the timely submission of the committee's reports
A POSH policy that exists only as a PDF on a shared drive satisfies none of the display, awareness or orientation duties. In practice, three artefacts settle most of this: the policy circulated with an acknowledgement, a notice on the board and the intranet carrying the committee members' names and contact details, and a dated record of the last awareness session.
The annual report, and where it is filed
The Internal Committee prepares an annual report for the calendar year and submits it to the employer and the District Officer. It states the number of complaints received, the number disposed of, the number pending for more than ninety days, the number of workshops and awareness programmes carried out, and the nature of the action taken by the employer.
For companies, there is a second and separate disclosure. The Companies (Accounts) Rules require the Directors' Report to state that the company has complied with the provisions relating to the constitution of an Internal Committee, along with the complaint numbers for the year. Auditors ask for this, and a nil return is a return.
The Government's SHe-Box portal accepts complaints directly and routes them to the relevant employer or District Officer, which means a complaint can reach a company from outside its own process. A committee that has never met is a poor way to discover this.
Penalties for getting it wrong
Failure to constitute an Internal Committee, to act on the committee's recommendations, to file the annual report or otherwise to comply with the Act carries a fine of up to ₹50,000. On a repeat offence the punishment is twice that, and the licence, registration or approval required to carry on the business can be cancelled or not renewed.
The fine is not the exposure worth planning around. A finding that the committee was improperly constituted can undo the outcome of an inquiry that was otherwise handled well, which leaves the employer having done the work twice and having protected nobody. The Supreme Court, in Aureliano Fernandes v. State of Goa in 2023, set out serious and widespread lapses in the implementation of the Act and directed governments and institutions to verify that committees exist and are properly constituted. Enforcement attention has followed that direction.
What organisations get wrong most often
- No external member, or an external member who is a friend of the founder rather than a person with relevant experience
- A committee constituted once and never reconstituted after the three-year term expired, or after half the members left the company
- One committee at head office covering branches in other cities
- Contract and intern headcount left out of the ten-employee calculation
- The policy published, but the members' names never displayed, so a complainant does not know who to approach
- Conciliation offered by the committee rather than requested by the complainant
- The complainant moved to another team as the interim measure
- No annual report filed with the District Officer, on the assumption that a year with no complaints needs no return
None of these are difficult to fix. Most of them take an afternoon, and they take it in advance rather than in the week a complaint arrives.
Frequently asked questions
Is an Internal Committee mandatory for all companies?
It is mandatory for every workplace with ten or more employees, counting interns, contract staff, consultants and probationers. Below ten, complaints go to the Local Committee constituted by the District Officer instead.
Who can be a member of the Internal Committee?
A woman employed at a senior level as Presiding Officer, at least two employees committed to the cause of women or with legal or social work experience, and one external member from an NGO or familiar with issues of sexual harassment. At least half the members must be women.
Is an external member compulsory on the Internal Committee?
Yes. One member must be from an NGO or association committed to the cause of women, or a person familiar with issues of sexual harassment, and the employer pays a prescribed fee. Omitting this member is the most common constitution failure.
What is the time limit for filing a POSH complaint?
Three months from the incident, or from the last incident in a series. The committee may extend it by a further three months where it records in writing that circumstances prevented an earlier complaint.
How long does a POSH inquiry take?
The inquiry must be completed within 90 days. The committee submits its report within 10 days of completing it, and the employer must act on the recommendations within 60 days of receiving it.
Can men file a complaint under the POSH Act?
The Act as written protects women. An employer may extend the same procedure to all employees through its own policy, and many do, but a complaint by a man is dealt with under the internal policy rather than under the Act.
Does the POSH Act apply to remote and hybrid work?
Workplace is defined to include any place visited during the course of employment, which covers online meetings, work chat and client or offsite locations. Conduct in those settings falls within the Act.
What happens if a complaint cannot be proved?
The committee recommends no action. An inability to substantiate a complaint is not the same as a false one, and the Act states that it does not attract action against the complainant. Malice must be established through a separate inquiry.
What is the penalty for POSH non-compliance?
A fine of up to ₹50,000 for failing to constitute a committee, act on recommendations or file the annual report. A repeat offence attracts twice that punishment and can lead to cancellation or non-renewal of the licence to carry on the business.
Does a POSH annual report have to be filed if there were no complaints?
Yes. The annual report goes to the District Officer for the calendar year whether or not complaints were received, and it also records the workshops and awareness programmes held during the year.
If you want a single afternoon to spend on this, spend it on the committee. Check the composition against the five rows in the table above, check the term has not expired, check there is a named external member with a signed engagement, and put the names and contact details somewhere an employee can find them without asking HR. Everything else in the Act depends on that committee being a real one.
