For more than a decade after the POSH Act came into force, India had no single database telling the government how many workplaces had constituted Internal Committees, how many complaints were filed each year, or how many were sitting unresolved beyond the 90-day statutory window
State governments held fragments. District Officers held more. The Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD), the law’s nodal authority, held very little.
The SHe-Box Portal was built to close that gap.
Launched in 2017 and substantially relaunched on August 29, 2024, the Sexual Harassment electronic Box is now the country’s central digital infrastructure for POSH compliance. It registers workplaces, captures Internal Committee (IC) details, accepts complaints from any woman in any sector, and routes those complaints to the right IC or Local Committee (LC) for action.
As of March 27, 2026, the portal carries over 1,61,000 registered workplaces and more than 68,460 Internal Committee records, according to an MWCD update issued in April 2026.
What Is the SHe-Box Portal?
SHe-Box (Sexual Harassment Electronic Box) is a single-window digital platform owned and operated by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. It serves three connected functions:
- A complaint channel for women employees across sectors to file workplace sexual harassment complaints online.
- A compliance registry where employers register their ICs and annual reports.
- A monitoring dashboard for nodal officers at the central, state, district, and UT levels to track complaint volumes, disposal rates, and pendency.
The portal sits at shebox.wcd.gov.in and supports multiple Indian languages.
Crucially, the portal doesn’t replace the IC structure created under the POSH Act. It routes complaints to the existing IC or LC, masks the complainant’s identity from everyone except the IC Chairperson, and tracks whether the statutory 90-day inquiry deadline is met.
| Feature | What It Does |
| Single-window complaint filing | Any woman, any sector, can register a complaint online |
| Automatic routing | Complaint sent directly to the relevant IC or LC |
| Identity masking | Only the IC/LC Chairperson can view complaint details |
| Real-time tracking | Complainant can check status; nodal officers see dashboards |
| IC registry | Workplaces upload the Presiding Officer and member details |
| Annual report submission | ICs upload compliance data digitally rather than by paper |
Why the Government Built SHe-Box
The POSH Act, 2013, mandates two redressal forums: an IC at every workplace with ten or more employees, and an LC at the district level for smaller establishments or complaints against employers themselves. Both bodies are required to maintain records and report annually to the District Officer.
In practice, that data didn’t reach a central system.
Annual reports were filed in hard copy. District-level numbers are rarely consolidated to the state level, and state numbers are rarely consolidated nationally. The MWCD, as the law’s nodal ministry, had no single dashboard to monitor whether the Act was actually being implemented.
The pressure to fix this intensified after the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Aureliano Fernandes v. State of Goa, which flagged “serious lapses” in POSH implementation across states and directed the Union and state governments to ensure compliance was tracked and reported.
Subsequent orders dated December 3, 2024, August 12, 2025, and January 6, 2026, reinforced that direction, instructing Chief Secretaries to ensure District Officers upload IC and complaint data to SHe-Box.
The portal is the government’s answer.
Who Can File Complaints Through SHe-Box?
Every woman covered by the POSH Act, 2013, can file through SHe-Box. The Act’s coverage is deliberately broad. It applies regardless of age, employment status, or sector.
That includes:
- Central and state government employees across ministries, departments, PSUs, and statutory bodies.
- Private sector employees, whether in formal corporate offices, IT/ITeS, manufacturing, retail, or services.
- Contract workers, interns, apprentices, and consultants working at any covered workplace.
- Domestic workers, who can file against household employers through the LC route.
- Unorganised sector workers, including those in agriculture, construction, and informal arrangements.
- Students and visitors, if the harassment occurred at a workplace they were attending in connection with work.
The coverage limit isn’t about who can file. It’s about which forum handles the case.
Workplaces with 10 or more employees must constitute an Internal Committee, and complaints from those workplaces go to the IC. Smaller establishments, complaints against the employer personally, and unorganised sector cases go to the LC constituted by the District Officer.
SHe-Box routes the complaint based on what the complainant declares about her workplace. However, it should also be noted that:
- Men cannot file under POSH. The Act is gender-specific. Male employees facing harassment must use the general workplace grievance channels or criminal law.
- The complaint must be filed within three months of the incident, extendable by another three months at the IC’s discretion.
How the Complaint Filing Process Works
Filing a complaint through the SHe-Box portal mainly comprises simple steps in order to make the process as accessible as possible.
Step 1: Registration
The complainant accesses shebox.wcd.gov.in and creates a user account using her name, email, and mobile number. She receives an OTP for verification. The portal supports complaint submission in multiple languages.
Step 2: Complaint Submission
The complainant fills in the complaint form. She is asked to provide:
- Her workplace details (employer name, address, sector).
- Whether the workplace has an Internal Committee.
- The respondent’s name and designation (if known).
- A description of the incident or pattern of behaviour.
- Supporting documents, if she has them (screenshots, emails, witness names).
Once submitted, the system masks her identity. Only the IC or LC Chairperson handling the case can see her details.
Step 3: Routing to Employer or Local Committee
The portal automatically routes the complaint based on the workplace declared:
- If the workplace’s IC is registered on SHe-Box, the complaint goes straight to the IC Chairperson’s verified email.
- If the workplace exists but its IC isn’t registered, the portal initiates an online process to gather workplace details and notifies the State and District Nodal Officers to push the IC’s registration.
- If the workplace has fewer than 10 employees, or the complaint is against the employer, the case goes to the Local Committee in the relevant district.
Step 4: Status Tracking
The complainant can log back in at any time to view the current status of her complaint, the inquiry stage, and whether the 90-day deadline is on track. Nodal officers at the centre, state, UT, and district levels see aggregated dashboards showing complaints filed, disposed, pending, and pending beyond the 90-day window.
What Happens After a Complaint Is Submitted
A complaint filed through SHe-Box doesn’t change the substantive process under the POSH Act. The Internal Committee still conducts the inquiry, the timelines still apply, and the employer still implements the recommendations. The portal adds visibility and a digital paper trail.
Employer Obligations
Once the IC receives a complaint, the employer is required to:
- Provide the IC with the resources, space, and access needed for a fair inquiry.
- Allow the IC to call witnesses, examine documents, and conduct meetings on company time.
- Ensure no retaliation against the complainant, respondent, or witnesses during the inquiry.
- Implement the IC’s recommendations within 60 days of receiving the report.
- Submit the annual POSH report to the District Officer, with a copy uploaded to SHe-Box.
Under the Companies (Accounts) Second Amendment Rules, 2025, companies must also disclose complaints received, disposed of, and pending beyond 90 days in their Board Reports.
IC Response Timelines
The IC works to the timelines set in the POSH Act, 2013:
| Stage | Timeline |
| Filing of a complaint | Within 3 months of the incident (extendable by 3 months) |
| IC inquiry | Within 90 days of receiving the complaint |
| IC report submitted to the employer | Within 10 days of completing the inquiry |
| Employer action on recommendations | Within 60 days of receiving the report |
| Annual POSH report to District Officer | By January 31 for the preceding calendar year |
Monitoring by Authorities
The MWCD, state nodal officers, and District Officers can pull dashboards by region, sector, or pendency. The system flags complaints pending beyond 90 days, allowing the District Officer to intervene if the IC isn’t moving the case.
The Ministry has stated that this real-time visibility is the portal’s core enforcement value, since it ends the historical opacity around POSH numbers.
The Benefits of a Central System
The presence of the SHe-Box postal as a central system for filing complaints solves more problems than one, along with providing additional benefits that have increased the efficiency of the POSH Act implementation.
Accessibility
A complainant no longer needs to know who her District Officer is, where the Local Committee sits, or how to physically deliver a written complaint. She files online, in her language, from her phone. For women in the unorganised sector, where IC structures often don’t exist on paper, the portal provides a route that bypasses the employer entirely.
Central Tracking
For the first time, the MWCD has a national view of POSH compliance: how many workplaces have ICs, how many complaints flow through, and how many sit beyond 90 days. The 1,61,000 workplaces registered and 68,460 ICs recorded as of March 2026 are the closest India has come to a real compliance census.
Escalation Support
If an IC sits on a complaint, the District Nodal Officer sees the pendency on the dashboard. The Aureliano Fernandes line of judgments has put courts behind that escalation, with the Supreme Court repeatedly directing Chief Secretaries to use SHe-Box data for compliance review.
Challenges and Criticisms
Despite the numerous positives, the SHe-Box portal isn’t a fix-all. Certain structural concerns recur in commentary and practitioner conversations, which must be addressed as soon as possible.
Awareness Gaps
A 2024 Walchand Plus survey cited by TPB earlier this year found that 40% of women experiencing workplace insecurity didn’t know POSH protected them. 53% of HR managers admitted confusion about the law.
If half of HR managers don’t fully understand the statute, expecting the average employee to know SHe-Box exists, let alone how to use it, is optimistic.
The MWCD’s own data backs this up. The complaint registration feature went live on October 19, 2024, and in the weeks immediately after, the portal received just 9 complaints. Volumes have grown since, but awareness remains the limiting factor.
Delayed Action Concerns
SHe-Box routes the complaint, but the IC still does the work. If the IC is poorly trained, captured by the employer, or slow, the portal can’t force a faster outcome.
The Udaiti Foundation found a 29% increase in POSH complaints registered by NSE-listed companies between 2022-23 and 2023-24, rising from 1,807 to 2,325 cases. It also found a 67% increase in unresolved cases over the same period.
The central system reveals the bottleneck, but it doesn’t dissolve it.
Confidentiality Fears
The portal masks the complainant’s identity from everyone except the IC Chairperson, but the IC is still inside the employer’s structure. Employees worried about reprisal often hesitate to file, especially when the respondent is senior or when HR is structurally close to leadership
Recent high-profile cases, including the TCS Nashik POSH case, have intensified questions about whether internal grievance channels work when the alleged misconduct involves people with institutional power.
The portal addresses the data and routing problem. It doesn’t address the cultural and institutional ones.
What HR Teams Should Know About SHe-Box Complaints
For HR leaders and compliance teams, SHe-Box has changed the operational picture in critical ways. Along with helping employees with the filing process, the portal has also served as an invaluable tool for HR professionals.
Preparedness Expectations
Several state and district administrations have moved from “recommended” to “mandatory” on SHe-Box registration. The District Women & Child Development Officer in Mumbai, for instance, mandated all private establishments with 10+ employees to register IC details on SHe-Box by May 15, 2025.
Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Delhi have issued similar advisories. HR teams should treat registration as required and complete it as soon as the IC is constituted.
Documentation Standards
The portal expects digital records: IC member names, designations, dates of appointment, external member credentials, training records, and annual reports. HR teams that historically maintained POSH paperwork on a shared drive now need it formatted for upload.
Key records to keep portal-ready when filing include:
- IC constitution order with member details.
- External member’s appointment letter and credentials.
- Awareness session attendance records.
- Annual report in the prescribed format (Form L).
- Complaint register with case status and disposal dates.
Response Protocols
When a complaint arrives via SHe-Box, the IC Chairperson receives it at her registered email address. The clock starts from that date. HR’s role is to ensure the IC has the support, access, and resources to conduct a fair inquiry within 90 days, while remaining outside the inquiry itself.
The IC operates independently of HR for a reason: the POSH Act’s structure deliberately separates the investigative function from the function with institutional proximity to leadership. HR’s job is enablement, not investigation.
In the End…
The SHe-Box portal hasn’t solved India’s POSH problem, and it was never going to. The law’s gap was never the absence of a portal. It was uneven implementation, under-trained Internal Committees, low employee awareness, and a culture of silence around workplace harassment. What the portal does is make the gap visible.
For the first time, the Ministry can see which states are registering ICs and which aren’t. District Officers can see which complaints have been sitting for more than 90 days. Complainants can track their own cases without depending on the goodwill of an HR team they may not trust.
Compliance isn’t just about having an IC anymore. It’s about having one that’s registered, contactable, properly trained, and moving complaints within the statutory clock. The portal makes the difference between paper compliance and actual compliance impossible to hide. That’s the point.
FAQs
What is the SHe-Box portal?
The SHe-Box (Sexual Harassment electronic Box) is India’s central digital platform for POSH compliance, operated by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. It allows women across sectors to file workplace sexual harassment complaints online, lets employers register their Internal Committees, and gives government authorities a dashboard to monitor compliance.
Who can file a complaint on SHe-Box?
Any woman covered by the POSH Act, 2013, can file through SHe-Box. This includes employees of central and state governments, private sector workers, contract staff, interns, consultants, domestic workers, unorganised sector workers, and students or visitors harassed at a workplace. The Act is gender-specific, so men cannot file under POSH.
What is the official SHe-Box website?
The official portal is hosted at shebox.wcd.gov.in and supports complaint submission in multiple Indian languages.
How long does the SHe-Box complaint process take?
The Internal Committee must complete its inquiry within 90 days of receiving the complaint. The IC then submits its report to the employer within 10 days of completing the inquiry, and the employer must act on the recommendations within 60 days.
Is my identity protected when I file on SHe-Box?
Yes. The portal masks the complainant’s identity from everyone except the IC or Local Committee Chairperson handling the case. Other employer representatives and HR staff cannot view complainant details through the portal.
What is the deadline for filing a POSH complaint?
The complaint must be filed within three months of the incident. The IC has the discretion to extend this period by another three months in deserving cases.
Do small businesses need to register on SHe-Box?
Workplaces with 10 or more employees must constitute an Internal Committee and register it on SHe-Box. Smaller establishments don’t need to constitute an IC, but their employees can still file complaints through SHe-Box, which routes the case to the District Local Committee.
What happens if my employer hasn’t registered its IC on SHe-Box?
If the workplace exists but its IC isn’t registered, the portal initiates an online process to gather workplace details and notifies the State and District Nodal Officers to push the IC’s registration.
Can men file complaints on SHe-Box?
No. The POSH Act, 2013 is gender-specific and protects only women. Male employees facing workplace harassment must use their company’s general grievance channels or pursue remedies under criminal law.
How can HR teams prepare for SHe-Box compliance?
HR teams should register their IC on SHe-Box as soon as it’s constituted, keep digital records of IC member details, external member credentials, awareness sessions, and annual reports ready for upload, and ensure the IC has independent space to function. Several state administrations have moved from recommended to mandatory on SHe-Box registration, so treating it as required is the safer position.
