POSH Act 2013 Explained: What Counts as Sexual Harassment at Work, Who It Covers and What Every Employer Must Do

TL;DR: The POSH Act, 2013 is India’s first legislation specifically addressing workplace sexual harassment, and it makes the employer responsible for preventing and resolving that harassment. The POSH Act protects women as complainants and covers both quid pro quo demands and hostile-work-environment conduct. Every organisation with ten or more employees must constitute an Internal Committee, run awareness programmes and act on complaints within fixed statutory timelines. Under Section 26, non-compliance can draw a fine of up to ₹50,000, which can double for repeat offences and put business licences at risk. POSH compliance depends on a trained Internal Committee able to run a fair inquiry, and a policy document alone does not deliver that.

What counts as sexual harassment under the POSH Act?

Sexual harassment under the POSH Act is unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature connected to work, whether physical, verbal or non-verbal. The Act’s statutory definition covers physical contact and advances, a demand or request for sexual favours, sexually coloured remarks, showing pornography and any other unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature. Certain circumstances linked to such conduct also count, including implied promises or threats about a woman’s job and an intimidating or hostile work environment.

Complaints that reach an Internal Committee fall into two broad categories:

• Quid pro quo harassment is conduct that ties a job benefit, or a threat to the job, to sexual compliance. A manager hinting that a promotion depends on a private dinner is the textbook case. Most people picture this scenario when they hear “POSH”.

• Hostile work environment harassment is sexual conduct that makes the workplace intimidating, offensive or humiliating without any explicit trade. Sexual jokes in a team chat, comments on a colleague’s body and unwanted messages after hours all sit here. The pattern often builds through small incidents rather than one dramatic event.

The second category dominates The Legal Swan’s caseload. Of the POSH complaints the law firm handled in 2025, it reports 79.8% involved hostile-work-environment conduct rather than quid pro quo. One firm’s caseload is not a national sample, so read the figure as a pattern rather than a market rate. ASPL’s view is that a policy written around the boss-demanding-favours scenario misses much of the conduct that actually reaches a committee.

The workplace reaches past the office door

The POSH Act defines the workplace more widely than the employer’s premises, extending to any place visited by the employee arising out of or during the course of employment, including transportation provided by the employer. Published commentary is less settled on how far that definition reaches into remote and virtual work, so a sound policy states the employer’s own position on video calls and messaging apps instead of leaving the committee to improvise. Offsites and travel need the same explicit treatment. The Legal Swan reports that 38.64% of incidents in the complaints it handled in 2025 occurred outside the physical office, at offsites, on business travel or at after-hours events.

Only women can bring a complaint under the POSH Act

The POSH Act protects women as complainants. Nishith Desai Associates describes the statute’s aim as a safe and dignified working environment for every woman, irrespective of her age or employment status. Men and transgender persons fall outside its complaint process, an exclusion that commentators have criticised.

Employers can go further than the statute requires. According to an undated explainer by training provider elearnposh, many organisations adopt gender-neutral policies voluntarily, but complaints from men or transgender persons fall outside the Act’s statutory IC powers. A complaint from a male employee therefore runs under the employer’s own policy and disciplinary rules, and the policy has to spell out that procedure in full.

Commentators also note that the Act’s definition of “aggrieved woman” excludes women governed by Supreme Court service regulations, and critics argue that informal-sector women struggle to reach the Act in practice. A 2024 paper in IJFMR suggests that women cannot complain against other women. That is one author’s reading rather than settled law, so take legal advice before turning such a complaint away.

Employers with ten or more employees carry these duties

Section 19 of the POSH Act sets out the employer’s duties. ASPL suggests building them in the sequence below, because each one depends on the one before it.

1. Constitute the Internal Committee. The Internal Committee (IC) is the body that receives and inquires into sexual harassment complaints, and every organisation with ten or more employees must constitute one. It must be chaired by a senior woman employee, include an external member and be at least half women, with members serving terms of up to three years. The Act describes the external member as one member from amongst non-governmental organisations or associations committed to the cause of women, or a person familiar with the issues relating to sexual harassment. Check that wording, and the Rules, before appointing anyone.

2. Publish the policy where people will see it. The Act mandates wide dissemination of the POSH policy, yet 22.02% of employee respondents in a pre-training survey by law firm The Legal Swan said they were unaware their organisation had one. An intranet page is the floor. Display the policy at every location, cover it at induction and send it to vendors whose staff work on site.

3. Run awareness programmes at regular intervals. The Act requires awareness programmes at regular intervals, and annual sessions are common best practice rather than a statutory rule. Sessions land better when they use grey-zone scenarios from the organisation’s own context, such as a vulgar group chat or a remark at an offsite. Managers need a separate session on what to do in the first hour after someone discloses harassment to them.

4. Train the committee as an inquiry panel. IC members hear evidence, examine witnesses and write findings that a High Court may later read. Natural justice, in an IC inquiry, means the respondent knows the allegation, sees the evidence and gets a fair chance to answer before any finding is made. Training should cover natural justice, evidence handling and report writing, ideally with a mock inquiry before a member sits on a live case.

5. Protect confidentiality. The Act places a confidentiality duty on the details of a complaint and its inquiry. Leaks can come from anyone who learns of a case, including managers and witnesses, so confidentiality belongs in manager training and in the disciplinary code.

6. Act on findings within the deadline. The employer must act on the committee’s recommendations within the statutory window. Many companies must now also report complaint numbers publicly, which the next section covers.

An untrained Internal Committee is a compliance gap even when every seat on it is filled.

Statutory timelines run from complaint to appeal

Comply360’s summary of the Act and Rules sets out the sequence: complaints must be filed within three months (extendable by three more), inquiries completed in 90 days, reports issued within 10 days, and recommendations acted on within 60 days. An appeal must be filed within 90 days.

Non-compliance costs more than the ₹50,000 fine

Section 26 caps the fine at ₹50,000, doubling for a repeat offence, with a business licence also at risk. ASPL’s view is that the fine is the smallest exposure an employer carries.

• Court-ordered compensation. High Courts have, in individual cases, ordered compensation running to lakhs and even crores of rupees, well beyond the statutory fine. Awards of that size are case-specific and can be revisited on appeal. They still show how far a court will go when an employer has failed the complainant.

• Public disclosure. Under the Companies (Accounts) Second Amendment Rules, 2025, covered companies must report POSH complaints received, disposed of and pending over 90 days in their Board’s Report from 14 July 2025. A complaint pending past 90 days is now a figure the board signs off on in a public document. Slow inquiries have become visible to shareholders and to every candidate who reads the annual report.

• Lost trust. Nishith Desai Associates observes that women are often hesitant to act for fear of being disbelieved or ridiculed. A mishandled case confirms that fear for everyone watching. The next person with a complaint is less likely to come forward, and the employer learns about the problem later and at higher cost.

Gaps in the Act that employers have to manage themselves

Nishith Desai Associates wrote in 2023 that proper implementation of the POSH Act “remains a challenge”. Most published critiques date from 2021 and 2022, so read them as long-standing concerns and check each against current law before acting on it.

Lawyers at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas set out the procedural gaps in a 2022 analysis. The Act’s three-month window for IC complaints is much shorter than the limitation for the parallel criminal offence, and the Rules set a three-member quorum without requiring an external member or a female majority to be present. Neither the Act nor the Rules say whether IC findings must be unanimous or by majority. The same analysis found that committees can struggle to act impartially against senior leaders, that inquiry details frequently leak, and that many inquiry reports are challenged in High Courts, with some set aside for not following natural justice because members lack legal training.

The Legal Swan’s survey points to where leaks start. Before training, 48.00% of employees and 41.14% of managers said they would discuss an ongoing POSH complaint with colleagues, which would breach the Act’s confidentiality rules.

Access is the other weak point. The Act requires a written complaint from an identified complainant, which critics say deters women who fear stigma; an anonymous hotline can surface concerns internally but does not replace that written complaint. Outside the workplace, the Martha Farrell Foundation, a Delhi-based gender organisation, has reported that many district Local Committees are not functioning meaningfully.

SHe-Box

the Government of India’s central online portal for registering and monitoring workplace sexual harassment complaints, which also holds Internal Committee and Local Committee information.

Critics have long argued that implementation is not centrally monitored. The government relaunched SHe-Box on 29 August 2024 as a central portal for complaints and committee information, yet no published national count of POSH complaints for 2025 or 2026 exists for employers to benchmark against. Until one does, an employer’s own complaint and closure data is the only reliable benchmark it has.

Sources

1. nishithdesai.com: India’s first legislation specifically addressing workplace sexual harassment

2. What Is The PoSH Act In India? Employer & Employee Guide (Comply360 (summarising Section 26 of the POSH Act), 2026-09-15)

3. doe.gov.in: physical contact and advances, a demand or request for sexual favours, sexually coloured remarks, showing pornography and any other unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature

4. India POSH Research Reports 2025 | POSH at Work (The Legal Swan / POSH at Work (‘The Quiet Crisis’ report))

5. All you need to know about POSH Act (elearnposh (describing a Government of India / Ministry of Women and Child Development portal))

6. POSH Act – Implementational Challenges | India Corporate Law (Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas, 2022-12-01)

7. Top 10 Criticism of PoSH act – POSH Trainer (POSH Trainer / Proud HR Services, 2021-07-15)

Frequently asked questions about the POSH Act

Get your POSH set-up reviewed before a complaint tests it

ASPL’s Strategic CHRO team works with growing companies and GCCs on the parts of POSH compliance that fail under pressure: committee composition and training, inquiry timelines, and the complaint figures that now go into the Board’s Report. Talk to ASPL about a POSH compliance review and get an operator’s view of where your process would break.