Building a Robust Internal Complaints Committee

Jun 23
5 min read

Best practices for ICC constitution, training, and inquiry procedures under the POSH Act — and the mistakes that quietly make a committee worthless.

Vatsal Mashar

Advocate & Labour Laws Consultant, Mashar Associates

In the course of advising organisations on POSH compliance, I have lost count of how often I encounter the same problem: a company has an Internal Complaints Committee on paper, a policy in a drawer, and a genuine belief that it is compliant — right up until a complaint arrives and the committee’s constitution does not survive scrutiny. An improperly constituted committee can render an entire inquiry legally invalid, no matter how fair the process felt to those conducting it. With courts now examining POSH processes far more closely than they once did, a defective committee is no longer a quiet administrative gap. It is a live legal liability.

The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 — the POSH Act — is not a difficult statute to comply with. But it is unforgiving of shortcuts. This guide sets out how to build a committee that actually holds: how to constitute it, how to keep it competent, and how to run an inquiry that will withstand challenge.

01. Who must have a committee — and which one

Every workplace employing ten or more workers is required to constitute an Internal Committee (IC), often still referred to as the Internal Complaints Committee or ICC. The obligation is on the employer, and it is mandatory — not contingent on whether any complaint has ever been received.

Where an establishment has fewer than ten workers, or where a complaint is made against the employer themselves, jurisdiction lies with the Local Committee (LC) constituted by the District Officer. One nuance organisations frequently miss: only a legally competent employer can validly constitute an IC. If the entity is not an “employer” within the meaning of the Act, the committee it forms may simply have no authority to act — a point Indian courts have applied to set aside proceedings entirely.

02. Constituting the committee correctly

This is where most failures originate, so it deserves precision. The Act prescribes the composition, and each element matters.

03. The mistakes that invalidate an inquiry

When I review committees, the same defects recur. Each of these can be enough to unravel an otherwise well-intentioned process:

The committee exists only on paper. Named in a policy but never properly notified, with members unaware they sit on it.
An expired term. Members continuing well beyond the three-year limit, so the committee is no longer lawfully constituted.
A missing or lapsed external member. The external seat is vacant, or the appointee is no longer associated with a qualifying organisation.
A Presiding Officer who has left. The senior woman who chaired the committee has resigned, and no valid replacement has been appointed.
Insufficient women members. The one-half requirement is not met after attrition or reshuffling.
No reconstitution after change. Composition is treated as a one-time event rather than something to be maintained.

The cure is simple but disciplined: treat committee composition as a living obligation. Review it at least annually and immediately upon any member becoming ineligible or leaving, and keep the appointment orders, consent letters and notifications on record.

04. Training: more than an annual ritual

A committee can be perfectly constituted and still fail, because its members do not know how to conduct an inquiry. Training is a statutory expectation, and the courts have repeatedly underscored that members must be capacitated to discharge their role — not merely appointed to it.

Effective training operates at two levels. Committee members need working knowledge of the Act, the principles of natural justice, evidence-handling, the conduct of a quasi-judicial inquiry, and the drafting of a defensible report. The wider workforce needs awareness of what constitutes sexual harassment, how to complain, and what protections exist — including in remote, hybrid and digital work settings, which the law’s definition of “workplace” readily reaches. I generally advise treating training as periodic and refreshed, with focused sessions for managers, rather than a once-a-year box-ticking exercise.

05. Running an inquiry that holds

The inquiry is where the committee’s competence is tested in real time. The framework sets clear timelines and clear duties.

Throughout, two duties run in parallel and are easy to underrate. Interim relief — such as transfer, leave of up to three months, or restraining contact — may be granted to protect the complainant during the inquiry. And confidentiality is a statutory obligation: the identity of the parties and witnesses, and the contents of proceedings, must not be published or disclosed, and breach carries its own penalty. A committee that leaks, even informally, exposes the organisation.

06. The compliance obligations beyond the committee

Constituting and running the committee is necessary but not sufficient. A genuinely compliant organisation also attends to its reporting and disclosure duties:

07. Why this matters more now

The text of the POSH Act has been stable, but expectations around its implementation have hardened considerably. In Aureliano Fernandes v. State of Goa (2023), the Supreme Court expressed serious concern at the poor implementation of the Act and issued detailed directions on the proper constitution and functioning of committees, with an emphasis on training, procedural rigour and natural justice. Since then, courts have grown markedly more interventionist in reviewing POSH processes, jurisdiction is being read in a way that keeps redress accessible across organisational boundaries, and authorities are moving towards district-level audits and centralised, digital oversight.

The penalties are real. Non-compliance can attract a fine, with repeat breaches drawing enhanced penalties and even cancellation of an establishment’s licence or registration — quite apart from the reputational and litigation exposure of a defective inquiry. The direction of travel is unmistakable: POSH compliance is now treated as a statutory obligation subject to judicial scrutiny, not an internal HR courtesy.

A note from Vatsal Mashar

The most expensive POSH mistakes I see are not bad-faith ones. They are committees that were set up correctly years ago and then never maintained — a term that lapsed, a member who left, an external seat that quietly emptied. By the time a complaint arrives, the committee is no longer valid, and the organisation discovers it at the worst possible moment.

At Mashar Associates we provide end-to-end POSH support: constituting and reconstituting committees, training members and employees, drafting and updating policies, and guiding or conducting inquiries so they withstand challenge. If you would like a compliance audit of your committee and policy, we would be glad to help — ideally before a complaint, not after one.