An Internal Committee, on a POSH complaint filed by an employee in October 2023, communicated that the allegations did not contain a 'sexual element' and therefore fell outside its jurisdiction. The Industrial Court later went further and set aside the IC's communication on merits, remanding the complaint for a fresh inquiry.
The Bombay High Court held that an IC's threshold determination that a complaint lacks a sexual element and warrants no inquiry is itself a 'recommendation' under Section 13(2) of the POSH Act and is therefore appealable under Section 18, upheld the appeal's maintainability on that basis, but set aside the Industrial Court's own merits findings and remanded the matter with directions to decide only whether the complaint contains an element of sexual harassment.
An employee whose sexual harassment complaint is summarily rejected at the threshold by an Internal Committee is not left without recourse — that threshold rejection itself can be appealed under Section 18 of the POSH Act, rather than requiring a fresh complaint or writ petition.