The absence of a committee is the employer's default, not your problem, and the Act anticipates it. There is a forum, it is a district forum, and the same three month clock applies to a complaint filed there.
Constituting a committee is not optional above ten people
Read Section 4(1) as it is written. Every employer of a workplace shall, by an order in writing, constitute an Internal Complaints Committee. The proviso adds that where the offices or administrative units of the workplace are at different places, or at divisional or sub-divisional level, the Internal Committee shall be constituted at all administrative units or offices. So a company that maintains one committee at its Gurugram head office and none for its Bengaluru development centre has not complied, whatever its policy document says. Section 19(b) separately requires the employer to display the order constituting the Internal Committee at a conspicuous place in the workplace. Ask for that order. Its absence is the evidence.
The gap in Section 6, and what it means in practice
Section 6(1) is worded for two situations: the establishment with fewer than ten workers, and the complaint against the employer. The common Bengaluru situation is a third one, an employer with forty or eighty people that simply never constituted a committee. The literal words do not cover it. What happens in practice is that the Local Committee takes the complaint, because the alternative is a woman with no forum at all, and the employer is separately exposed to prosecution under Section 26. Where the respondent is a founder, a director or the person who controls the establishment, you are squarely inside the second limb of Section 6(1) and there is no argument to have.
A committee that exists on paper is not always a committee
Section 4(2) fixes the composition, and a body that does not meet it is not an Internal Committee even if the intranet says so. It requires a Presiding Officer who is a woman employed at a senior level at the workplace from amongst the employees, not less than two members from amongst the employees preferably committed to the cause of women or with experience in social work or legal knowledge, and one member from a non-governmental organisation or a person familiar with issues relating to sexual harassment, with a proviso that at least one half of the total members nominated shall be women. Three managers named in an email, with no external member, fails on two counts. Raise the constitution point in writing at the outset, because it decides which forum hears you, and our guide on the POSH complaint procedure sets out what a compliant committee and a compliant inquiry look like.
| Situation | Forum | Provision |
|---|---|---|
| Employer has a validly constituted Internal Committee | Internal Committee | Section 4(1) |
| Establishment has fewer than ten workers | Local Committee of the district | Section 6(1) |
| Complaint is against the employer himself | Local Committee of the district | Section 6(1) |
| No committee constituted at your office at all | Local Committee, plus a Section 26 complaint against the employer | Sections 4(1), 6(1) and 26 |
| Where to hand the complaint in | Nodal officer for the ward or municipality, who forwards it within seven days | Section 6(2) |
You do not have to find the district office yourself
Section 6(2) requires the District Officer to designate a nodal officer in every block, taluk and tehsil in a rural or tribal area, and in every ward or municipality in an urban area, to receive complaints and forward them to the Local Committee within seven days. That is a route very few complainants know about, and it matters when you are trying to file before the limitation runs out. Get an acknowledgement with a date on it from whoever receives it.
The timelines do not change
Filing with the Local Committee does not buy you extra time. Section 9(1) still requires a written complaint within three months from the date of the incident, or from the date of the last incident in a series, and the Committee may extend that by not more than a further three months for reasons recorded in writing where it is satisfied that circumstances prevented you from filing in time. The inquiry must be completed within ninety days under Section 11(4), the report goes to the District Officer within ten days of completion under Section 13(1), and the appeal period is ninety days under Section 18(2). Our guide on the Section 9 time limit and the series of incidents test deals with the counting.
The offence, and who can prosecute
Section 26(1) makes it punishable with fine which may extend to fifty thousand rupees where an employer fails to constitute an Internal Committee under Section 4(1), fails to take action under Sections 13, 14 and 22, or contravenes or abets the contravention of other provisions or the rules. On a second conviction for the same offence, Section 26(2) provides twice the punishment and, separately, cancellation of the licence or withdrawal, non-renewal or cancellation of the registration required to carry on the business. Under Section 27, a court takes cognizance only on a complaint made by the aggrieved woman or a person authorised by the Internal or Local Committee, no court below a Metropolitan Magistrate or Judicial Magistrate of the first class tries it, and every offence under the Act is non-cognizable. In plain terms, the police will not register this on their own and you have to move the Magistrate.
What I tell clients in this position is to do two things in the same week and keep them separate. File the complaint with the Local Committee through the ward nodal officer, and send the employer a written request for the constitution order under Section 4(1) and the display required by Section 19(b). The reply, or the silence, becomes the record for everything that follows, including any claim about what happened to your job afterwards.