A missing Internal Committee can expose your business to a fine up to ₹50,000. This POSH compliance checklist helps Indian employers check appointments, training and reporting.

The penalty comes from section 26 of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, called the POSH Act in this guide. The more immediate concern is whether someone facing harassment can reach a competent committee without asking permission from the person they are complaining about.

A policy PDF cannot answer that question. Neither can a training invoice. You need a working complaint route, valid committee appointments, people who understand their responsibilities, and records showing that the process works. This guide covers the central framework and explains where to verify state and district instructions. It is an employer readiness checklist, not a procedure for deciding an individual complaint. Source: POSH Act, sections 4, 19 and 26.

Does your business need an Internal Committee?

Workplaces with 10 or more employees must constitute an Internal Committee, or IC. Count employees rather than women employees. The Ministry of Women and Child Development's February 2026 explanation expressly uses the 10-or-more threshold. Section 6 of the POSH Act provides the Local Committee route for establishments with fewer than ten workers, and for complaints against the employer. Source: government explanation of coverage.

Do not base your assessment only on the permanent payroll. Section 2(f) defines employee broadly, including temporary workers, contract workers, probationers, trainees and apprentices. Prepare a headcount reconciliation with HR and your contractor coordinator. Where the working arrangement is unclear, record it for legal review instead of quietly excluding the person.

The Act protects women at a workplace whether employed there or not, under section 2(a). Section 2(o) also includes places visited during employment and employer-provided transport for such journeys. Your implementation should therefore consider customer visits, field assignments and business travel alongside the registered office.

For a business with several locations, section 4(1) addresses offices or administrative units situated at different places and requires committees at those units or offices. Review your actual structure with your adviser. A single headquarters email address is not sufficient evidence that every location has been assessed correctly.

For a smaller establishment using the Local Committee route, keep verified district contact details available to workers. Being below the IC threshold does not remove the duty to provide a safe workplace under section 19. Source: POSH Act, sections 2, 4, 6 and 19.

Build a POSH compliance checklist with evidence and owners

Start with one row per obligation. Use these fields: workplace, applicable provision, required action, owner, reviewer, due date or trigger, evidence location, and unresolved issue. Keep complaint identities out of this general tracker.

A useful starting checklist is:

  1. Confirm employee counts and workplace coverage, including contractor arrangements.
  2. Verify the written order constituting each required IC.
  3. Check member eligibility, gender composition and appointment expiry dates.
  4. Publish the policy and current committee contact information.
  5. Check displays at each workplace and access for staff without company email.
  6. Record employee awareness sessions and committee orientation separately.
  7. Test the complaint contact route using a clearly labelled administrative test.
  8. Maintain a restricted system for case deadlines and documents.
  9. Confirm the annual-report recipient, format and local submission instruction.
  10. Assign someone to monitor state, district and central implementation updates.

Treat this as an internal control document, not a certificate. A row marked complete should point to something reviewable: a signed order, a functioning contact address, attendance evidence or a submission acknowledgement.

If you cannot identify which obligations apply across your locations, check your business's compliance posture with Compliance Radar. Describe your business activity, workforce and states of operation, then review the applicable requirements with the person responsible for implementation. Keep individual complaint details out of that business description.

Check committee appointments before the first complaint arrives

Section 4(2) requires a woman employee at a senior level as Presiding Officer, at least two employee members, and an external member from an organisation committed to the cause of women or a person familiar with sexual-harassment issues. At least half the total membership must be women. Section 4 also provides alternatives when a senior woman employee is unavailable in the relevant workplace.

The appointment order should identify members and their terms clearly. Under section 4(3), a member's specified term cannot exceed three years from nomination. Section 4(5) requires vacancies to be filled by fresh nomination in accordance with the section. Source: POSH Act, section 4.

For your internal review, ask each member to confirm availability and contact details. Check whether anyone has left the organisation or changed roles. Collect enough information to substantiate the external member's suitability; a vendor invoice alone says little about the person's qualifications for this responsibility.

Put appointment-expiry reminders in the same management calendar used for other recurring obligations. A reminder 60 days before expiry is a suggested administrative buffer, not a statutory POSH deadline. It gives you time to arrange a suitable replacement and orientation without leaving an avoidable gap.

Do not assume that naming HR as the complaint owner creates a valid IC. HR can support administration, but the committee needs the composition, authority and functioning required by the Act.

Make the policy and reporting route usable on every shift

Section 19(b) requires conspicuous display of the penal consequences of sexual harassment and the IC constitution order. Section 19(c) requires employee awareness programmes at regular intervals and orientation for committee members. Rule 13 of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Rules, 2013 addresses policy dissemination, member details and capacity building. Source: central Rules, rule 13.

Use language employees understand. A warehouse worker should not need a corporate login to discover whom to contact. A travelling salesperson should be able to find the same information away from the office. Check printed notices, onboarding material and digital contact information together.

Explain the kinds of unwelcome conduct covered by sections 2(n) and 3, using workplace examples rather than treating the session as a vocabulary test. Train managers to receive concerns respectfully and refer them through the proper channel. They should not demand that an employee first confront the person complained against.

Separate general awareness from committee training. Employees need to understand the route and protections. Committee members need practical preparation for fair procedure, documentation, confidentiality and time limits. Keep the session date, audience, material used, attendance and follow-up questions.

The central Act says regular intervals; it does not prescribe one universal annual training date in section 19(c). Set a documented programme suited to your workforce and check additional applicable directions. New recruits and employees returning after a long absence should not have to wait indefinitely for the next large event.

Put complaint deadlines in a restricted calendar

The statutory timetable is event-based. Under section 9, a complaint is ordinarily made within three months of the incident, or the last incident in a series. The committee may extend that period by up to a further three months for recorded reasons where circumstances prevented timely filing. The section also requires reasonable assistance when the woman cannot make the complaint in writing.

Other key POSH Act limits are:

These are different clocks. Do not replace them with a single “close ticket within 90 days” rule. Source: POSH Act, sections 9, 11, 13 and 18.

A restricted calendar should capture the event that starts each clock, the recorded date, responsible person and evidence of completion. Let the committee and qualified adviser determine procedural questions, including extensions and the applicable inquiry rules. The general compliance team should receive only the status information it needs.

Conciliation, meaning an attempt to settle the matter before inquiry, is available under section 10 at the aggrieved woman's request; monetary settlement cannot be its basis. Do not turn it into a mandatory management-led negotiation. Section 14 also makes clear that inability to substantiate a complaint or provide adequate proof does not by itself justify action against the complainant. Source: POSH Act, sections 10 and 14.

Prepare annual reporting without inventing a national due date

Section 21 requires the committee's annual report to go to the employer and District Officer for each calendar year. Rule 14 lists five reporting elements: complaints received, complaints disposed of, cases pending beyond 90 days, awareness programmes conducted, and the nature of action taken. Source: official reproduction of section 21 and rule 14.

Section 22 separately requires the employer to include cases filed and their disposal in the organisation's annual report, or intimate those numbers to the District Officer where no such organisational report is required. Do not assume one document automatically satisfies both responsibilities. Source: POSH Act, sections 21 and 22.

The central provisions cited here do not establish a universal 31 January submission deadline for every Indian workplace. Verify the current instruction from your relevant District Officer or state department. Save the instruction, reporting period, recipient, submission method and acknowledgement together.

For a multi-state business, keep separate jurisdiction fields instead of copying last year's deadline across all branches. Where an instruction is unclear, seek written clarification early and retain the correspondence. An internal target can help preparation, but label it as internal.

A year with no complaints still needs an annual reporting review. Prepare accurate nil figures where appropriate and include the other required reporting information. Zero complaints do not tell you whether employees trust or can access the reporting mechanism.

Keep governance evidence separate from complaint files

Section 16 restricts publication or disclosure to the public, press and media of complaint contents, identities, proceedings, recommendations and action taken. Section 17 addresses consequences for breach by people entrusted with handling these matters. Source: POSH Act, sections 16 and 17.

As a practical control, maintain two separate collections. The governance collection contains policy versions, appointment orders, training records and reporting acknowledgements. The restricted case collection contains material handled through the complaint process. Review access when people change roles or leave.

If a customer asks for supplier compliance evidence, start with governance documents and an appropriately scoped confirmation. Do not send complaint narratives to a buyer's procurement mailbox. Review any request for case information with the committee and legal adviser before disclosure.

For wider recordkeeping, use the compliance evidence guide. Its general evidence structure can support administration, while sensitive case records require their own access decisions.

Run a practical review this month

Use the following sequence as a suggested management exercise, not a grace period for existing breaches. If a required committee is missing or a complaint is waiting, address that immediately through the proper process.

First, map workplaces and reconcile headcounts. Next, inspect appointment orders and policy access. Then test contacts, review training coverage and verify the district reporting instruction. Finally, ask a reviewer who did not prepare the checklist to sample the evidence.

For example, in a hypothetical 35-person consultancy, HR may produce a policy and training attendance sheet while the external member's appointment has expired. The checklist should leave committee validity unresolved until the appointment issue is addressed. A green training row cannot cancel a red appointment row.

Track useful management measures: locations reviewed, current appointments, staff reached by awareness activities, unresolved actions and reporting acknowledgements obtained. These are operational measures, not statutory performance thresholds. Avoid setting “zero complaints” as the team's success target; that can discourage reporting instead of improving safety.

Check current SHe-Box instructions as part of the review. The government describes it as a complaint platform supporting implementation, with workplace and committee information. Follow applicable onboarding directions, but do not treat a portal record as a substitute for a functioning committee. Source: Ministry update on SHe-Box, April 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Does the threshold mean ten women employees?

No. The threshold concerns employees or workers, not the number of women. Review the broad employee definition and the structure of each workplace rather than counting only women on permanent payroll.

Can a small firm simply ignore POSH until it grows?

No. Section 19 employer duties remain relevant, and section 6 provides a Local Committee route for establishments below ten workers. Keep that route accessible and verify the district contacts.

Can our CA serve as the external member automatically?

A professional title alone does not establish the section 4(2)(c) qualification. Assess whether the proposed person meets the specified background or familiarity with sexual-harassment issues, and record the basis for appointment.

Is the fine always ₹50,000?

No. Section 26(1) sets a fine that may extend to ₹50,000; it is not an automatic fixed invoice. Section 26(2) provides enhanced consequences for a subsequent conviction for the same offence, including potential business-licence or registration consequences through the competent authority.

Can a compliance platform handle the inquiry for us?

Use software to support obligation discovery and administrative tracking. Committee decisions, fair procedure and sensitive records need the appropriate authorised people. Assess those responsibilities separately before choosing any case-management tool.

What should we do after completing this checklist?

Assign owners to every remaining gap and verify completion evidence. Keep the POSH compliance checklist alongside your other employer obligations, with clear triggers for headcount changes, new workplaces and expiring appointments. Check your compliance posture free at complianceradar.in.