Compliant after statutory period not maintainable: HC

Srinagar, Dec 5: The High Court of J&K and Ladakh has held as “non-maintainable” a complaint filed by a woman employee after the statutory period under “sexual harassment at workplace” against an official of the Income Tax Department.

A bench of Justice Javed Iqbal Wani said this while allowing an Income Tax Department employee’s plea calling into question the cognisance and recommendation made by the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) of the department on a complaint filed by a woman employee after nearly a year and half of the alleged incident of “sexual harassment”.

The court pointed out that in terms of Section 9 of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, and Redressal) Act 2013, any aggrieved woman may make, in writing, a complaint of sexual harassment at workplace to the internal committee if so constituted, or the local committee, in case it is not so constituted, within three months from the date of the incident.

The court said in case of a series of incidents, the aggrieved woman may make the complaint within a period of three months from the date of the last incident.

Dealing with the plea at hand, the court noted that the record revealed that the woman employee admittedly filed the complaint before the ICC of the department on October 16, 2017, in respect of the alleged incident dated April 25, 2016, much beyond the period prescribed for filing such complaint under Section 9 of the Act of 2013.

The court held that under these circumstances, the complaint filed by the woman employee against the official under the Act of 2013 on October 16, 2017, regarding an alleged incident dated April 25, 2016, indisputably could not have been entertained or else taken cognisance of by the committee and dealt with thereafter.

The court concluded that the preliminary objection regarding the maintainability of the complaint filed by the woman against the official before the ICC raised by the official’s counsel was found to be legally sustainable.

The court said that this had rendered the woman’s complaint that was taken cognisance of by the ICC and the recommendation made therein illegal and invalid on the basis of a settled position of law.

“If a statute requires a thing to be done in a particular manner, that thing has to be done in that manner alone,” the court said.

After holding the complaint in question non-maintainable and proceedings initiated thereon invalid, the court underscored that the “rest of the grounds urged by the petitioner (official) in the instant petition against the complaint since the proceedings conducted thereon by the ICC including the recommendations made thereof pale into insignificance and need not be adverted to”.