Thirteen years after the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 was enacted, India finds itself confronting an uncomfortable paradox. The legal framework is robust, the compliance architecture expansive—and yet workplace justice remains elusive. The failure today is not one of legislative design, but of institutional will. Data, court interventions, and recent corporate scrutiny together underline a sobering truth: PoSH is widely complied with on paper, but unevenly honoured in practice.
The PoSH Act was never intended to function as a symbolic safeguard. Rooted in the Visakha guidelines and constitutional guarantees of equality and dignity, it envisaged Internal Committees (ICs) as quasi‑judicial bodies, not HR sub‑functions. The law outlines clear duties: timely inquiries, procedural fairness, confidentiality, and reasoned outcomes. Yet national data shows that these standards are routinely diluted once translated into organisational process.
When PoSH governance within major organisations—particularly in the IT sector—comes under scrutiny, it reverberates far beyond the company involved. Firms such as Tata Consultancy Services employ hundreds of thousands of workers and shape compliance norms across industries. Their policies become templates; their failures, precedents.
An analysis of disclosures by NSE‑listed companies over the past decade shows a steady rise in reported sexual harassment complaints—but a significantly slower pace of resolution. The disparity has widened alarmingly in recent years. During FY 2023–24, total PoSH complaints reported by 700 NSE‑listed companies rose by 29%, from 1,807 to 2,325, while pending cases increased by 67%, jumping from 260 to 435.
Delays of this scale directly violate statutory timelines under the Act, which mandate completion of inquiries within 90 days and submission of reports within 10 days. These are not technical lapses. They are substantive failures that prolong trauma, weaken evidence, and disincentivise future reporting.
Equally concerning is under‑disclosure. Despite SEBI mandating PoSH reporting in annual reports since 2018, only a fraction of companies consistently disclose complaints. Many continue to report “zero cases” year after year—a claim that reflects silence more than safety.
Structural compliance gaps persist as well. According to data cited in a national survey of employers, 59% of companies had not constituted a properly functioning Internal Complaints Committee, despite it being a legal requirement. As per the govt statics that further illustrate this deficit: while over 1.66 lakh workplaces are registered, only 71,368 Internal Committees are listed, revealing a massive enforcement shortfall.
The law itself leaves little ambiguity. The PoSH Act defines the complainant as an “aggrieved woman” but deliberately describes the respondent as “any person”. This asymmetry, affirmed by judicial interpretation, reflects legislative intent: protection is gender‑specific, accountability is not.
Yet workplace practice continues to rely on outdated assumptions—about who can harass, what constitutes severity, and which complaints merit formal inquiry. Courts have increasingly intervened where ICs deny fair hearings, conduct opaque processes, or deliver unreasoned findings, reinforcing that procedural justice is non‑negotiable.
The Calcutta High Court’s decision in Dr. Malabika Bhattacharjee v. Internal Complaints Committee made this explicit, clarifying statutory limits while also exposing how thin organisational understanding of the law often is.
Recent public attention on PoSH processes within large IT organisations, including TCS, has triggered sector‑wide responses, with peer companies publicly reaffirming the independence and board‑level oversight of their Internal Committees. This reaction underscores a critical shift: PoSH is no longer an HR matter alone. It is a governance issue, with reputational, legal, and fiduciary consequences.
Importantly, the focus here is not individual allegations or disputed facts. It is institutional response. The PoSH Act does not merely regulate misconduct; it regulates how organisations respond to it. Inaction, delay, or procedural compromise can—as courts and regulators increasingly recognise—amount to facilitation of harm.
One persistent misconception is that seriousness depends solely on the alleged act. In reality, the Act recognises that institutional failure compounds harm. A delayed inquiry is not neutral. A leaked identity destroys trust. An inadequately reasoned report silences not just one complainant, but many.
The rising pendency of cases and low reporting confidence reflected in national data suggest that many workplaces remain performatively compliant—technically aligned with the Act, but substantively resistant to its ethos.
The PoSH Act is a piece of social‑welfare legislation, enacted in response to structural gender inequality. It cannot succeed if reduced to a checklist. The data now makes one conclusion unavoidable: India does not suffer from over‑reporting of workplace harassment; it suffers from under‑resolution.
What is required is neither legal amendment nor policy inflation, but institutional courage—independent ICs, trained members, transparent reporting, board‑level oversight, and zero tolerance for retaliation or delay.
The law has articulated its mandate clearly. Courts have reinforced it. The numbers have exposed the cost of ignoring it. What remains is a choice—whether organisations will treat PoSH as a reputational obligation or finally embrace it as what it was always meant to be: a guarantee of dignity at work.