Sexual harassment at the workplace — from the Vishaka guidelines to the POSH Act, 2013. What counts as a "workplace" and an "employee", how the Internal Complaints Committee is constituted and exercises jurisdiction, limitation, confidentiality, retaliation, and the treatment of false complaints.
The Bombay High Court at Goa held that s.14 of the POSH Act penalises a woman (or a person filing on her behalf) for a false and malicious complaint, but provides no punishment for a third party who instigates one. It also held that an Internal Committee cannot record a named instigator as an 'unknown' source where his identity is disclosed in the retraction letter that closed the complaint.
The Supreme Court held that an Internal Complaints Committee at the aggrieved woman's own workplace has jurisdiction under the POSH Act even where the respondent is employed in a different department or organisation. The phrase 'where the respondent is an employee' in Section 11 is a conditional trigger for service rules, not a jurisdictional limit.
Fifteen years after Vishaka, a long-running PIL forced compliance. The Supreme Court directed States to constitute Complaints Committees and amend their service and standing-order rules so that a Committee's report counts as a disciplinary inquiry finding — the enforcement bridge from Vishaka to the POSH Act, 2013.
Justice G.S. Patel laid down a detailed code to shield the identities of parties and witnesses in sexual-harassment litigation — anonymised cause-titles, orders delivered in chambers or in-camera, and a bar on media or social-media disclosure without leave. The judgment built the working confidentiality framework for POSH cases under s.16 of the 2013 Act.
The Bombay High Court held that a shared autorickshaw used to commute to office is not a 'workplace' under s.2(o)(v) of the POSH Act unless the transport is employer-provided. The Internal Committee that found the SBI employee guilty therefore acted without jurisdiction, and its order was set aside.
The Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of a sexual-harassment complaint as time-barred under section 9 of the POSH Act. A complaint must be filed within three months of the last incident, extendable by three more for recorded reasons, and later administrative actions extend that window only if they share a direct nexus with the harassment.
The Kerala High Court held that a 'hostile work environment' divorced from any sexual conduct or advance is not sexual harassment under the POSH Act, and that proceedings need a written complaint under Section 9. A purely service or labour grievance falls outside the Act.
The Delhi High Court held that discharging a probationer while her sexual harassment complaint was pending — in defiance of a no-adverse-action direction — was retaliatory, mala fide and void. It ordered reinstatement with full back wages, and ruled that the Akademi's Secretary is the 'employer' under section 2(g) of the POSH Act, so the Local Committee had jurisdiction.
On 20 January 1999 — the first Supreme Court application of Vishaka — Chief Justice Anand, writing for a two-judge Bench, restored the disciplinary dismissal of a Private Secretary at the Apparel Export Promotion Council that the Delhi High Court had reduced. The judgment held that sexual harassment includes any unwelcome sexually-determined conduct and does not require physical contact; that unwelcomeness is judged from the victim's perspective; and that writ-court review of disciplinary action in sexual-harassment cases is narrowly confined to procedural fairness and proportionality. A digest of the holding, the CEDAW-anchored reasoning, and the line that runs from Vishaka through Chopra into Section 2(n) of the POSH Act 2013.
On 12 May 2023, a two-judge Bench of Bopanna and Hima Kohli JJ. set aside the Goa University disciplinary inquiry against its former vice-chancellor for procedural defects in the Internal Complaints Committee and, more consequentially, issued nationwide directions to State Legal Services Authorities, the National Judicial Academy and statutory regulators for ICC capacity-building, compliance audits and training. A digest of the holding, the structural reasons the 2013 POSH Act needed a second judicial push ten years on, and the compliance architecture the directions installed.
In the absence of a domestic statute on workplace sexual harassment, a three-judge Bench led by Chief Justice Verma framed guidelines drawn from India's international obligations and made them binding by direction. The guidelines governed for sixteen years until the 2013 POSH Act codified them. A digest of the doctrinal move, the guidelines themselves, and the relationship between the judgment and the statute it inspired.