The Complaint-to-Redressal Timeline Every Employer Should Know

When a POSH complaint actually lands, the single most common mistake an employer makes isn't legal - it's procedural. Missing a statutory timeline, even by a few days, can undermine an otherwise well-handled inquiry. The POSH Act builds in a specific sequence of deadlines from the moment a complaint is filed to the moment it's resolved, and every one of them matters.

Filing: the clock starts here

A written complaint must generally be filed within three months of the incident - or, where there's a series of incidents, within three months of the last one. The Internal Committee has discretion to extend this by a further three months where it's satisfied there was sufficient reason for the delay, but that extension is not automatic; it requires the Committee to actually record why it's granting one.

Conciliation: optional, and never monetary

Before a formal inquiry begins, the complainant may ask the Committee to facilitate a settlement. This is genuinely optional - it happens only at her request, never at the employer's or the Committee's initiative - and the Act is explicit that any settlement cannot be on monetary terms. If the parties do reach terms and comply with them, the Committee records the settlement and closes the complaint, providing copies of its reasoning to both sides. If conciliation isn't sought, or fails, the Committee moves straight to a formal inquiry.

Inquiry: 90 days, both sides heard

Once an inquiry begins, both parties must be given a reasonable opportunity to be heard, and the complainant is entitled to be assisted by a person of her choice throughout. This is exactly the ground the Supreme Court emphasised in Aureliano Fernandes - an inquiry conducted in undue haste, without genuinely accommodating a party's ability to participate, doesn't satisfy the Act even if it technically reaches a conclusion. The inquiry itself must be completed within 90 days of the complaint being filed.

Interim relief is available during this period too: the Committee can recommend transferring the complainant or respondent, granting the complainant leave of up to three months (over and above her other leave entitlements), or restraining the respondent from supervising the complainant's work assessment while the inquiry is pending.

Report and action: two more deadlines that follow immediately

The Committee must submit its inquiry report within 10 days of completing the inquiry. If the allegations are found proven, the Committee can recommend a range of outcomes - from a written apology or warning up to termination, wage deductions, or a monetary award to the complainant - though it's worth being precise that the Committee only recommends; it does not itself impose disciplinary action. The employer must act on those recommendations within 60 days of receiving the report.

Appeal: the final statutory window

Either party dissatisfied with the Committee's recommendations, or with the employer's failure to implement them, has 90 days to appeal to the court or tribunal specified under the applicable service rules.

The safeguard against misuse, applied narrowly

Where an inquiry concludes a complaint was false or malicious, or that evidence was deliberately fabricated, the Committee may recommend action against the complainant under Section 14. This provision is genuinely narrow in practice - an allegation simply not being proven is not, by itself, evidence of malice, and Committees are expected to apply this safeguard carefully rather than as a default response to an unsuccessful complaint. Treating it as a routine counter-measure risks discouraging genuine complaints, which defeats the purpose of the Act.

Why the sequence matters as much as the substance

Every one of these deadlines exists for a reason connected to fairness - giving the respondent enough time to prepare a defence, giving the complainant a bounded and predictable process rather than an open-ended one, and giving the employer a clear point at which inaction itself becomes a compliance failure. An employer that gets the substance of a case right but mishandles the timeline - rushing an inquiry, sitting on a report past the 60-day action window, or failing to properly extend a filing deadline - hands an aggrieved party exactly the kind of procedural challenge that succeeded in Aureliano Fernandes.

The takeaway

Build the statutory timeline into your Committee's standard operating procedure as a checklist, not something reconstructed case by case. The substance of a POSH inquiry can be handled well and still be vulnerable to challenge if the procedural clock wasn't managed with the same care.