POSH Act compliance in India is easier when you build the committee first
POSH Act compliance in India begins the day your Indian headcount reaches ten, and most global employers notice that day months late. A missing Internal Committee can draw a fine of up to ₹50,000, but the bigger cost is a complaint that lands when nobody knows who investigates it. Constitute the committee, publish the policy, and book the training before anyone files, because the Act rewards employers who prepared and punishes those who improvised.
The law is the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, and it reaches far beyond your head office policy. India enforces it locally, at the level of each workplace, whether your people sit on your payroll or someone else’s.
POSH Act compliance in India starts at your tenth employee
The Act requires an Internal Committee at every workplace with ten or more employees. Below that number, a District Officer sets up a Local Committee to take complaints, and that same Local Committee handles any complaint made against the employer itself, according to LiveLaw’s report on the Supreme Court’s December 2024 directions.
Count heads by workplace, not by company. VinciWorks’ 2026 summary notes that organisations with several offices need a committee at each relevant office or unit, though they can still keep central oversight.
Remote work doesn’t switch the Act off
The term workplace is broad. The same summary warns that it can stretch to virtual meetings and messaging platforms, and that a complaint shouldn’t simply be passed to a head office HR team abroad to look into. So a Bengaluru engineer who reports a manager based in London still has a claim on an Indian process.
Who counts as an employee
Section 2(f) covers people employed directly or through a contractor, and it names contract workers, as Khaitan & Co’s analysis in Bar & Bench points out. The contractor you assumed sat outside the Act may well sit inside it. Our guide to misclassification penalties shows how often labels hide real obligations.
The Internal Committee has a fixed shape and a three year clock
Every Internal Committee is formed by a written order from the employer, and the Act sets who must sit on it. The table below puts each seat next to the rule and the habit we’d recommend.
| Seat or rule | What the Act requires | What we’d do in practice |
| Presiding Officer | A senior woman employee; if none is available, a nominee from another office or unit of the same employer | Name a deputy as well, so one resignation doesn’t leave the committee headless |
| Internal members | At least two, drawn from staff committed to women’s causes or with social work or legal knowledge | Pick people who will actually attend; avoid filling seats by seniority alone |
| External member | One person from an NGO or association committed to women’s causes, or someone familiar with sexual harassment issues | Sign the engagement letter early, since this is usually the hardest seat to fill |
| Gender balance | At least half of all members must be women (Section 4) | Check the ratio again whenever membership changes |
| Term | Members hold office for a period not exceeding three years | Diarise the expiry date on the day you sign the order |
| Written order | The employer constitutes the committee by an order in writing | Keep the signed order in your India compliance file |
The seat descriptions come from the text of the Act and TaxGuru’s overview of the Act. Publish the members’ names and contact details where staff can find them. A committee nobody can reach isn’t doing its job.
Four clocks start running once a complaint arrives
A complaint sets off four deadlines in sequence, and missing any one of them becomes your problem, not the complainant’s. Here they are in order.
- Complaint window. A written complaint should generally come within three months of the incident, extendable by up to three months with recorded reasons, per VinciWorks’ 2026 summary.
- Inquiry. Section 11(4) says the inquiry must finish within ninety days.
- Report. The committee reports its findings within ten days of finishing the inquiry (Section 13).
- Action. Under Section 13(4), the employer must act on the recommendation within sixty days of receiving it.
Add them up and the ceiling from the start of an inquiry to action on its findings is 160 days. Treat that as a limit, not a target. A committee that has never met before a complaint arrives tends to spend its first weeks learning the procedure instead of hearing evidence.
Meanwhile, the training you run before any complaint is what shortens those weeks. Schedule an orientation for committee members and an awareness session for everyone else, and keep attendance records.
Penalties and reporting shape POSH Act compliance in India
Section 26 sets a fine of up to ₹50,000 for failing to constitute a committee or to act on its recommendations. A repeat breach doubles the punishment and can lead to cancellation, withdrawal or non renewal of a business licence or registration, as the text of the Act and TaxGuru’s overview of the Act both describe.
Reporting adds a second layer. The committee prepares an annual report each calendar year for the employer and the District Officer (Section 21), and the employer includes the number of cases filed and disposed of in its own report (Section 22). The report covers complaints received, complaints disposed of, cases pending beyond ninety days, workshops held, and the action taken.
VinciWorks reports that from July 2025 company Board Reports must also carry complaint counts and workforce gender composition. Confirm with your company secretary whether that reaches your India entity or your parent.
Enforcement is moving to district level
On 3 December 2024 the Supreme Court, in Aureliano Fernandes v State of Goa, told states to notify a District Officer for every district and to appoint nodal officers who forward complaints to the Local Committee within seven days. It also ordered a survey of public and private bodies that have set up committees, according to LiveLaw’s report. The Union government described private employers as very hesitant on committees.
Read that as a signal. The registry of who has a committee and who doesn’t is being built, and it’s being built district by district.
POSH Act compliance in India when an Employer of Record employs your team
An Employer of Record is the legal employer, yet your team still works at your desks, in your channels and under your managers. That split is exactly where responsibility blurs, so settle it in writing before anything happens.
The Act defines an employer to include, at workplaces not otherwise covered, the person discharging contractual obligations for the employees (Section 2(g)(iii)). Combined with the wide definition of employee, we wouldn’t assume a provider carries every duty alone, and we wouldn’t assume the client carries none.
Consider a company that engages twelve engineers in Pune through an Employer of Record. Twelve crosses the threshold. Yet no committee exists, because the client assumes the provider has one and the provider assumes the client’s office handles it. This is an illustration, not a real case, and it’s the pattern we’d check for first.
Put five answers into the service agreement:
- Who constitutes the committee, and who appoints and pays the external member.
- Where employees lodge a complaint, and how fast the provider tells you about one.
- Who runs the inquiry when the respondent is one of your managers.
- Who prepares and files the annual report.
- Who funds and records the annual training.
A provider that can’t answer all five is telling you something about its depth. Our page on Employer of Record services in India sets out how legal employment and day to day management divide, and the 50 questions guide to hiring in India covers the wider employment lifecycle. For the surrounding rulebook, see our notes on HR compliance in India and the new labour codes. Complaint files also hold personal data, so read our piece on employee data privacy under the DPDP Act before you decide where they’re stored.
Your next step is a thirty minute committee audit
Pull your India headcount by location today. For any site with ten or more people, find four documents: the written order constituting the committee, a named external member, a published policy, and this year’s training record.
If one is missing, fix it this month, and put the committee’s three year expiry date in your calendar. Then ask your Employer of Record or payroll partner to confirm in writing who holds each document.
This is practical guidance, not legal advice. State rules and court rulings keep evolving, so have a qualified employment lawyer review your committee setup.