6 Red Flags Your Internal Committee Isn’t Working

Your Internal Committee can exist on paper and still fail every test that matters. A constitution order, four names, an external member, and an annual report filed on time tell you the IC is compliant. They don’t tell you it works. The gap between the two is where complaints stall, inquiries get quashed, and women decide it isn’t worth coming forward.

The POSH Act, 2013, makes the Internal Committee mandatory for every workplace with ten or more employees. But the constitution is the floor, not the goal. A committee that moves too fast can be as damaging as one that doesn’t move at all.

So how do you tell a functioning IC from a decorative one? Six signals separate the two. If your committee shows even two of them, you have a problem that a compliance checklist won’t catch.

The Composition Doesn’t Hold Up

Start with the simplest test, because it’s the one most committees quietly fail. Section 4(2) of the POSH Act fixes the IC’s composition, and the rules aren’t suggestions. A minimum of four members. At least half of them women. A Presiding Officer who is a senior woman employee. Two internal members with a background in social work or legal knowledge. And one external member from an NGO or someone familiar with sexual harassment issues.

Drop any category, and the whole inquiry is exposed. A respondent can challenge the committee’s constitution after the fact, and a defective IC gives them the opening. The external member exists precisely to counter internal bias, yet it’s the appointment most employers treat as an afterthought.

Here’s the quick audit. Run your committee against this:

If you can’t immediately name your external member and the NGO or background they bring, that’s red flag number one. For the full breakdown of who qualifies and who’s disqualified, TPB’s guide to Internal Committee composition and tenure under POSH covers the eligibility rules in depth.

Nobody Knows the IC Exists

A committee that employees can’t find isn’t a redressal mechanism. It’s a filing requirement.

The POSH Act puts an affirmative duty on the employer to display the IC’s composition, the penalties for harassment, and how to file a complaint at a conspicuous place in the workplace. Many organisations print this once, tape it to a notice board near a fire exit, and consider the job done. Meanwhile, the people who most need the information, new joiners and contract staff, never see it.

The deeper signal is awareness, not signage. Ask three random employees who their Presiding Officer is. If they can’t say, your IC has a visibility problem, and visibility is the first thing that breaks trust.

The Supreme Court flagged exactly this gap in its 2024 directions, noting inadequate publicity around the SHe-Box portal, the central government’s online complaints channel. A bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and N.K. Singh found serious deficiencies in POSH compliance in the private sector, and the central government itself termed the hesitation a “red flag.”

When awareness is low, complaints don’t disappear. They just go unreported, or they surface months later when the three-month filing window has nearly closed.

Complaints Aren’t Coming In (And You Think That’s Good News)

Zero complaints feels like a clean record. More often, it’s a warning light.

Reporting under POSH has grown sharply over the past decade, and the growth itself tells the story. Across 300 NSE-listed companies analysed by the Ashoka University Centre for Economic Data and Analysis, 10,337 sexual harassment cases were registered under the POSH Act between FY14 and FY25, with reporting growing 974% over the period. The number of complaints in FY14 was just 161. That isn’t a surge in harassment. It’s a surge in confidence that the system will respond.

Half of all reported cases came from just eight of the 300 analysed companies, and large companies accounted for between 98 and 100% of reported cases. Smaller and mid-range firms reported almost nothing. The likeliest explanation isn’t that harassment skips smaller workplaces. It’s that their committees aren’t generating the trust needed for anyone to come forward.

So treat a flat complaint count with suspicion. A functioning IC in a workplace of any real size will eventually receive complaints, including ones that turn out to be unfounded. Persistent silence usually means employees have concluded that reporting isn’t safe or isn’t worth it.

Inquiries Drag, Or They Race

The POSH Act sets clocks for a reason. Once a complaint is filed, the IC has a 90-day window to complete its inquiry. The employer then has 60 days to act on the committee’s recommendations. Miss those timelines consistently, and you have a process problem that compounds with every case.

But speed cuts both ways, and this is where committees get it wrong in opposite directions.

• Too slow: Cases sit for months. Witnesses move on, memories fade, and the complainant concludes nothing will happen. Across the NSE-listed set, roughly 14% of all cases remained unresolved. Pendency isn’t a neutral state. It’s a message.
• Too fast: The committee rushes to a finding to close the file. This is what tripped up the IC in Aureliano Fernandes v. State of Goa. The Supreme Court set aside the outcome because the inquiry denied the respondent a fair hearing, and the matter went back to square one. A rushed inquiry isn’t efficient. It’s a quashing waiting to happen.

A healthy IC tracks every complaint against the statutory clock and treats both extremes as failures. If your committee can’t tell you, today, how many cases are open and how long each has been pending, the timeline discipline isn’t there.

Members Were Never Trained To Do This

Section 4 tells you who sits on the committee. It doesn’t make them competent to run a quasi-judicial inquiry, and most members aren’t, on day one.

An IC inquiry is a fact-finding exercise that must balance the complainant’s protection with the respondent’s right to a fair hearing. Get the procedure wrong, mishandle evidence, breach confidentiality, or skip the principles of natural justice, and the finding collapses on appeal, exactly as it did in the Goa University case. Workplace awareness and training are mandated under the Act, and failure to conduct meaningful training weakens compliance.

Training isn’t a one-time induction either. Members rotate, the law evolves through court rulings, and the every-three-year reconstitution under Section 4(3) brings in fresh faces who often start from zero. The test here is simple but uncomfortable: ask your IC members to explain the difference between conciliation and inquiry under the Act, or when a complaint should be routed to a Local Committee rather than the IC. If the answers are vague, the committee is improvising, and improvisation in a harassment inquiry is how cases get overturned.

The Annual Report is An Afterthought

Section 21 of the POSH Act requires the IC to prepare an annual report every calendar year and submit it to the employer and the District Officer. The report has to disclose actual numbers: complaints received, complaints disposed of, cases pending for more than 90 days, and the awareness programmes conducted during the year. It’s a statutory filing, not an internal memo.

Skip it, file it late, or pad it with fiction, and the consequences are concrete.

Under Section 26, these lapses can attract penalties of up to ₹50,000 per violation, with repeated non-compliance leading to higher fines, licence cancellation, or loss of government benefits.

There’s a newer wrinkle, too. The Companies (Accounts) Second Amendment Rules, 2025, require organisations to disclose POSH compliance in their annual board reports, with penalties for failure or false disclosures. POSH compliance has moved from an HR file into the board’s reporting line.

A truthful annual report is your evidence that the IC actually functioned. When a complaint escalates to a labour authority or a court, a clean filing history is the difference between a defensible process and a scramble for documentation. A committee that can’t produce its last three annual reports on request isn’t working, whatever the constitution order says.

In the End…

An Internal Committee is one of those structures that’s easy to build and hard to keep honest. The constitution order gets signed, the names go on a notice board, and everyone moves on, until a complaint arrives and the cracks show all at once.

None of these six red flags requires a lawyer to detect. Pick a single afternoon this week and run the test. Pull your constitution order and check it against Section 4(2). Ask three employees who their Presiding Officer is. Find your last annual report. Look at how long your open cases have been open. The committee that passes all four isn’t just compliant. It’s the one employees will actually trust when it matters most.

FAQs

---

What makes a POSH Internal Committee non-compliant?

An IC becomes non-compliant when it breaches Section 4(2) of the POSH Act: fewer than four members, less than half women, no senior woman Presiding Officer, a missing external member, or members serving past the three-year tenure cap. A defective composition lets a respondent challenge the entire inquiry after the fact.

Is zero POSH complaints a good sign for an organisation?

Usually not. A flat complaint count in a workplace of any real size often signals low trust rather than no harassment. Reporting under POSH grew 974% across 300 NSE-listed companies between FY14 and FY25, showing that a functioning IC tends to generate complaints because employees trust it to respond.

How long does an IC have to complete a POSH inquiry?

The IC has 90 days to complete its inquiry once a complaint is filed, and the employer then has 60 days to act on its recommendations. Both delay and excessive speed are failures, as a rushed inquiry that denies a fair hearing can be set aside, as seen in Aureliano Fernandes v. State of Goa.

What are the penalties for POSH non-compliance in India?

Under Section 26, failing to constitute the IC or file the annual report can attract penalties up to ₹50,000 per violation. Repeated non-compliance can lead to doubled fines and cancellation of a business licence or registration.

Does an Internal Committee have to file an annual report?

Yes. Section 21 requires the IC to prepare an annual report each calendar year and submit it to the employer and District Officer, disclosing complaints received, disposed, pending beyond 90 days, and awareness programmes conducted. The Companies (Accounts) Second Amendment Rules, 2025, also require POSH disclosure in board reports.