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SC widens ambit of sexual harassment at workplace Act

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has ruled that proceedings under the Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH) Act can be initiated not only at the department where the accused employee works but also at the workplace of the complainant and at any site visited by the employee in the course of employment, in a judgment that significantly strengthens workplace safety protection for women.

POSH Lawyer HighCourt Chandigarh Panchkula Mohali Derabassi

Settling a long-standing legal ambiguity, a bench of justices JK Maheshwari and Vijay Bishnoi rejected the argument that an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) can inquire into a complaint only if it is constituted in the accused employee’s own department.

Any narrower interpretation, the court said, would erect fresh “procedural and psychological barriers” for aggrieved women, forcing them to pursue com-plaints in unfamiliar offices and undermining the POSH Act’s social welfare purpose.

“The aggrieved woman, who has allegedly suffered an act of sexual harassment, would be compelled to file a complaint before the ICC constituted at the workplace of the ‘respondent’,” noted the bench on Wednesday, warning that such a requirement would push women into “alien workplaces” to seek justice. The court stressed that this would defeat one of the Act’s central objectives: ensuring that redressal mechanisms are accessible and safe for women.

At the heart of the challenge was one phrase of the Posh Act -‘where the respondent is an employee’. ANI

The judgment came in an appeal filed by a 2010-batch IRS officer challenging the jurisdic-tion of the ICC at the Department of Food and Public Distribution, where a 2004-batch IAS officer was posted and where she (the IAS officer) alleged that he (the IRS officer) sexually harassed her on in May 2023. The IAS officer lodged an FIR the next day and then approached the POSH ICC in her own department. As the ICC initiated proceedings and summoned him for a hearing, the accused officer moved the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), contending that only the ICC under the Department of Revenue his own controlling authority, had jurisdiction to inquire. The CAT rejected his plea, and the Delhi high court upheld that decision in June 2023. The officer then approached the SC, which allowed the inquiry to continue but directed that the final report be sealed pending the outcome of the appeal. The inquiry has since concluded, and the report was shared with the court.

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