The story so far: A young student’s self-immolation at a college in Balasore, Odisha has put the spotlight on the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) which failed to validate her complaints of sexual harassment against her head of the department. The victim’s family has claimed the members of the ICC were not trained adequately and that the environment in the college and within the ICC was biased in favour of the accused.
The Supreme Court first called for complaint committees to be set up in its 1997 judgment in response to a petition filed after Bhanwari Devi, a social worker in Rajasthan, was gang-raped when she tried to stop a child marriage. The Court provided basic definitions of sexual harassment in the workplace, and guidelines to combat it. Known as the Vishaka Guidelines, they called for an appropriate mechanism to be created by employers to ensure time bound treatment of complaints of sexual harassment. It said that the Complaints Committee should be headed by a woman, and include women as at least half its members, as well as a third party to prevent undue pressure from senior levels within the organisation.
