Why POSH Compliance Is Under Direct Supreme Court Supervision Right Now

Most compliance obligations settle into a predictable rhythm once the initial rules are in place. POSH compliance hasn't been allowed to do that. Since 2023, the Supreme Court has kept a direct, active watch over how the Prevention of Sexual Harassment framework is actually being implemented on the ground - and that watch has intensified, not eased, in the years since.

The case that reopened the question

In Aureliano Fernandes v. State of Goa (Civil Appeal No. 2482 of 2014, decided 12 May 2023), the Supreme Court was dealing with a Goa University employee dismissed following an Internal Committee inquiry conducted largely ex parte, after his repeated absences for medical reasons. The Court found that the inquiry had proceeded in undue haste, without giving him a reasonable opportunity to be heard - a clear violation of natural justice, regardless of the seriousness of the underlying allegations. It's worth being precise about what the Court did and didn't find: his separate challenge to the Committee's composition (that its members were junior to him) was specifically not upheld - the case turned on procedural fairness in how the inquiry was run, not on how the Committee was constituted.

What made the judgment significant beyond the individual case was the Court's broader observation: a decade after the POSH Act came into force, implementation on the ground remained inconsistent and, in many workplaces, absent altogether. That observation is what turned an individual employment dispute into the trigger for sustained institutional oversight.

From one judgment to ongoing supervision

The Court didn't stop at deciding the appeal. It directed the Union of India, all States and Union Territories, and a wide range of public and professional bodies to carry out a time-bound verification exercise confirming whether Internal Committees, Local Committees and Internal Complaints Committees actually exist and function as the Act requires - with compliance affidavits due within eight weeks.

That oversight has continued through connected proceedings since. An order dated 3 December 2024 directed authorities to activate, integrate and actively use the Central Government's SHe-Box portal for tracking Committee constitution nationwide, and required States and UTs to file affidavits on their implementation status. When the Amicus Curiae reported continuing non-compliance with that direction, the matter was kept alive rather than closed - proceedings on the district-wise verification survey were still being tracked through 2025, with reporting on outstanding gaps continuing into the second half of the year.

Why this matters more than a typical compliance update

Two things distinguish this from an ordinary statutory update. First, it's judicial rather than executive - the pressure is coming from continuing court supervision, not a one-time legislative amendment, which means the goalposts can move again with the next hearing rather than settling into a fixed rulebook. Second, the Court's own language has been unusually direct about institutional failure: it has effectively told the country that POSH compliance, ten years in, cannot be assumed to be happening just because the law exists on paper.

For an employer, that combination - active judicial supervision plus an explicit finding of widespread non-implementation - is a meaningfully different risk environment from "there's a law and we have a policy document." It means a compliance gap discovered today lands against a backdrop where courts are actively looking for exactly these gaps, not a backdrop of routine, low-scrutiny regulation.

The takeaway

If your organisation's POSH compliance was last properly reviewed before 2023, it's worth treating that review as out of date - not because the statute changed, but because the enforcement environment around it fundamentally has. A compliant-looking policy from several years ago is no longer sufficient reassurance in a landscape where the Supreme Court itself is actively verifying whether Committees exist at all.