Group of ministers to see if laws against sexual harassment at workplace adequate

Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman, minister for women and child development Maneka Gandhi and possibly minister for road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari will be members of the panel that will look into the existing laws

Updated on: Oct 17, 2018, 23:35:21 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is forming a group of ministers headed by home minister Rajnath Singh to look into legal provisions against sexual harassment at the workplace, and to suggest amendments to the law, if necessary, to remove any infirmities, people with direct knowledge of the development said.

Electronic and Print media journalists stand to protest against the sexual harassment at the work places as part of the #Metoo campaign at Parliament Street in New Delhi, India, on Saturday, October 13, 2018. (Photo by Mohd Zakir/ Hindustan Times) (Mohd Zakir/HT PHOTO)

Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman, minister for women and child development Maneka Gandhi and possibly minister for road transport and highways Nitin Gadkari will be members of the panel that will look into the law, the people said on condition of anonymity.

The panel will look into the Vishakha Guidelines of the 1990s that spelled out procedures for use in India in cases of sexual harassment at the workplace, and the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, that replaced them.

A report will be submitted by the panel within three months after determining whether the prescribed safeguards against sexual harassment are adequate or need to be strengthened to serve as a deterrent.

One aspect the panel will look into is a provision requiring a first information report to be filed with the police before criminal proceedings can be launched against an offender, the people cited above said; if an FIR is not in place, an offence of sexual harassment is dealt with merely as an administrative issue.

The formation of the panel and the tight deadline of three months given to it for submitting a report reflects the government’s concern over mounting allegations of sexual harassment, including in the entertainment and media industries. The allegations have surfaced as part of the #MeToo movement in which women have alleged harassment and abuse by men in positions of power.

On Wednesday, minister of state for external affairs MJ Akbar quit after at least a dozen journalists accused him of sexual misconduct during the years when he was a journalist and newspaper editor. Akbar, who has denied the accusations, has filed a criminal defamation case against journalist Priya Ramani, who sparked off the allegations by tweeting about him.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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