The local complaints committee for POSH cases (Prevention of Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Act of 2013) will be scaled up to cover all districts within the next seven to eight months, said chairperson of the National Women’s Commission, Vijaya Kishore Rahatkar, on Thursday. She shared this at the launch event of the first NARI (National Annual Report and Index on Women’s Safety) 2025 report, published by PValue Analytics, a data science company, in Delhi. Rahatkar said as of now, only a few of these committees are active and training of local committee members is currently underway.
Addressing gaps highlighted by SC and the new report
This comes at a time when the Supreme Court earlier this month ordered all states and Union territories to do a thorough check of the sexual harassment redressal machineries, as nodal officers in many cases were unaccounted for or inaccessible by complainants. As per the NARI 2025 report, although 91% of the women reported safety at the workplace, nearly half of them were unclear on whether their organisation had a POSH committee to begin with. Additionally, graduate students and higher income women display higher rate of reporting sexual harassment than those with no formal education, and female graduate students and women above 18 in supervisory roles across professions has the highest incidence of harassment at 12%.
Decentralising justice for all workplaces
Rahatkar said more women are making their way into the workforce, but it is equally important to make these workspaces safe and secure for women. Last week, an incident in Kerala made the news, wherein two female sub-inspectors accused an IPS officer of sexual harassment.
“In the next seven to eight months, we will achieve 100% coverage of all districts in the country with the local complaints committees,” she announced, mentioning that the work on instituting these committees started about four months ago, and the training phase is still not complete. Active local LCs will serve to decentralise the process, making access to justice easier for complaints coming from smaller organisations with 10 or less employees.
