TThe Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Centre and States whether it is yet to set up complaints committee to receive complaints of sexual harassment against women at workplace despite the law being passed five years back.
Doubts arose about the implementation of the ambitious law enacted 15 years after the apex court's landmark verdict in Vishaka case of 1997 after a PIl filed by NGO Initiatives for Inclusion Foundation presented information provided under Right to Information Act which revealed "shocking" state of affairs on the implementation front.
According to advocate Sanjay Parikh, who represented the NGO in Court, information was sought from each State and UT on the progress made on the appointment of District Nodal Officers to receive complaints, constitution of local Complaints Committees at district level, compilation of Annual Compliance Reports from every organisation in each district, and awareness activities undertaken by State to encourage affected women to step forward.
Only five States - Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Chhattisgarh and Haryana and two Union Territories of Daman & Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haweli constituted local complaints committee while States of Telangana, Goa, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, were still in the process of setting them up. Rest of the States and UTs did not respond to the RTI query.
On the appointment of District Nodal officers for collection of complaints, only 12 States and four UTs had details about the same. Rest States/UTs were either in the process of appointing them or chose not to give response to the query. The shocking part was about the Annual Compliance Reports which no State or UT produced barring the exception of Haryana and Rajasthan. The absence of Delhi was conspicuous as under no head, the Capital provided information under the Act.
The Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud issued notice on the PIl posting the matter for hearing after four weeks. The petition said, "It is quite well known that the women working at the grass-root level are victims of sexual harassment but in the absence of any grievance redressal mechanism available to them for making complaints, they suffer the act of sexual harassment silently."
The Act was enacted to give a legal imprimatur to the Vishaka guidelines formulated by the Court in its judgment of August 13, 1997 where every organisation, private, Government, or semi Government had to constitute a committee to deal with complaints of women facing sexual harassment at workplace.