The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 is Act No. 14 of 2013. It received Presidential assent on the 22nd of April, 2013, was gazetted on the 23rd of April, 2013, and was brought into force on the 9th of December, 2013 [L1-C1].
Those dates matter because they explain a feature of the Act that practitioners often miss: this is one of the only Indian statutes that is a direct codification of a Supreme Court judgment. The judgment came first, and the Act came later. You cannot read the Act in isolation. You read it against the judgment it codifies, and now also against the three Supreme Court rulings of 2023 and 2025 that have re-opened parts of the text.
The Vishaka starting point
For sixteen years before this Act, the operating law on workplace sexual harassment in India was a set of guidelines issued by the Supreme Court in Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan, decided on the 13th of August, 1997. The Vishaka case arose from the gang rape of Bhanwari Devi, a saathin in the Rajasthan government's Women's Development Programme, who was attacked for opposing a child marriage. There was no central statute that addressed workplace sexual harassment at the time. The Supreme Court used Article 32 of the Constitution to lay down binding guidelines that would operate as the law of the land until Parliament enacted legislation.
The Vishaka Guidelines defined sexual harassment, placed the duty to prevent it on the employer, and required every workplace to constitute a Complaints Committee headed by a woman, with not less than half women members, and with a third-party member from an NGO or organisation familiar with workplace sexual harassment. If those requirements sound familiar, they should. The 2013 Act lifted them almost verbatim into Section 4.
The sixteen-year gap and what filled it
Vishaka was decided in 1997. The Act came in 2013. In the intervening sixteen years, the Supreme Court issued follow-on judgments to plug specific gaps. In Apparel Export Promotion Council v. A. K. Chopra (1999), the Court treated even an attempt at unwanted physical contact as sexual harassment within Vishaka. In Medha Kotwal Lele v. Union of India (2012), the Court directed every State and Union Territory to implement Vishaka in form and substance, and held that until central legislation was passed, the Vishaka Guidelines would continue to bind.
That is the historical reason the Act, when it finally came, was not radical. It codified what the courts had already been requiring for sixteen years. As a practitioner you will sometimes hear an employer say "we are still following the Vishaka guidelines, we do not need a new committee". That is wrong on two counts. First, Vishaka was superseded by the Act on the date the Act came into force. Second, the Act adds duties that Vishaka never contained, in particular the annual report under Section 21, the Section 22 disclosure in the Board's Report, and the penalty under Section 26.
What the Act actually does, in one sentence
The Act provides protection against sexual harassment of women at workplace and prevention and redressal of complaints of sexual harassment, by constituting an Internal Committee or Local Committee, prescribing an inquiry procedure, and imposing duties and penalties on employers.
Three things to note in that sentence. First, the Act protects women only. It does not apply to men or non-binary employees in its current form. Bills to extend it have been discussed but have not been passed. Second, the protection is at the workplace, but the Act defines workplace very widely, and after Dr. Sohail Malik v. Union of India (December 2025) that definition is wider still. Third, the Act is procedural before it is substantive. Most of the cases that go wrong go wrong on procedure, not on the underlying allegation.
The three rulings that reshaped the Act in 2023 to 2025
If a practitioner reads only the bare 2013 Act today, they will give wrong advice. Three Supreme Court rulings in the last three years have moved the law materially. You will meet each of these in the appropriate later module. Lesson 4 of this module places them on a single timeline.
- Aureliano Fernandes v. State of Goa, Civil Appeal No. 2482 of 2014, decided on the 12th of May, 2023
[L1-C2]. The Court flagged "serious lapses" in enforcement after ten years and directed a nationwide audit of whether Internal Committees and Local Committees are actually constituted and functional. The Court routed the audit through Chief Secretaries of every State and Union Territory and added a parallel directive to the National Legal Services Authority and the State Legal Services Authorities to develop training modules for IC members. - Vaneeta Patnaik v. Nirmal Kanti Chakrabarti, 2025 INSC 1106, decided on the 12th of September, 2025
[L1-C3]. The Court reaffirmed the strict three-month plus three-month limitation under Section 9. It also introduced the Direct Nexus Test for cases that try to use later administrative actions to revive an otherwise time-barred complaint. After this ruling, the "continuing wrong" argument is much harder to run. - Dr. Sohail Malik v. Union of India, 2025 INSC 1415, decided on the 10th of December, 2025
[L1-C4]. The Court held that an aggrieved woman is entitled to approach the Internal Committee of her own workplace, even if the respondent works in a different department or organisation. The Court also reiterated the wide reading of "workplace" under Section 2(o) to include virtual workspaces, client sites, field locations, and transportation provided by the employer.
You will see these three rulings cited again and again across this course. Memorise the names and the years now. As a practitioner, you should be comfortable saying out loud: "Section 9 read with Vaneeta Patnaik" or "Section 4 read with Aureliano Fernandes" or "Section 2(o) read with Sohail Malik". That is the working vocabulary of POSH in 2026.
A 2025 statutory shift you must not miss
One more thing changed in 2025 that is not from the Supreme Court. The Companies (Accounts) Second Amendment Rules, 2025, notified by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and effective from the 14th of July, 2025, expanded the Board's Report disclosure that companies must make on POSH compliance [L1-C5]. The old Section 22 disclosure (number of cases filed and their disposal) is still there, but companies must now also report workforce gender composition (female, male, transgender headcount) and more granular POSH statistics. This puts the IC's annual report and the company's Director's Report on the same line for the first time. If you are an in-house counsel or a company secretary, this is the change that will eat your time in the Q1 reporting cycle.
How this course is structured
You are now in Module 1. The remaining modules in this course are:
- Module 2. Defining sexual harassment under Section 2(n) and the Section 3 circumstances.
- Module 3. Who is bound: employer, employee, aggrieved woman, and the expanded workplace after Sohail Malik.
- Module 4. Constituting the Internal Committee under Section 4 read with the Aureliano Fernandes directions.
- Module 5. The Local Committee, the District Officer, and small establishments.
- Module 6. Complaint and inquiry under Sections 9 to 13 and Rule 7, after Vaneeta Patnaik.
- Module 7. Outcome, Section 13(3) action, Section 14 false complaints, and Section 18 appeal.
- Module 8. Employer compliance, Section 21 annual report, Section 22 disclosure, and Section 26 penalties.
The remaining lessons in Module 1 cover: how to read the Act and the Rules as one working text (Lesson 2), the structural map of the statute (Lesson 3), the three-ruling timeline in detail (Lesson 4), and the practitioner's reading list of source documents (Lesson 5).