Vigilance Matters
- No Government servant shall indulge in any act of sexual harassment of any woman at her work place.
- Every Government servant who is incharge of a workplace shall take appropriate steps to prevent sexual harassment to any women at such workplace.
Ans: In its Order dated 26.04.2004 in the Writ Petition No. 173-177/1999 in the case of Medha Kotwal Lele and Ors. Vs. U01 & Ors. the Hon’ble Supreme Court has directed that ‘ the Reports of the Complaints Committee shall be deemed an Inquiry Report under the CCS Rules. Thereafter, the Disciplinary Authority will act on the report in accordance with the Rules’. Sub-Rule (2) of Rule 14 of CCS (CCA) Rules, 1965 has accordingly been amended to provide that the Complaints Committee shall be deemed to be the Inquiry Authority for the purpose of these Rules by the Notification No. 11012/5/2001-Estt.A dated 01.07.2004 (GSR 225 dated 10th July, 2004). In view of the said amendment made to the CCS(CCA) Rules, the instructions contained in DOPT’s O.M. dated 12th Dec., 2002 stands modified and the report of the Complaints Committee should be treated as an inquiry report and not a preliminary report. (DOP&T O.M. No.110131312009-Estt. (A) Dated the 21st July, 2009]
[DOPT OM dated 12.12.2002 as amended by O.M. d꧃ated 4.8. 2005]
Ans: The Complaint Committee is the competent authority in such cases to decide the procedure. However, since the report of the committee is to be treated as the enquiry report under the CCS(CCA) rules and the Disciplinary Authority is to take action on that report as per the same rules the procedure prescribed in rule 14 of the CCS(CCA) Rules are to be followed as far as practicable.
(DOP&T O.M. No. 11013/3/2009-Estt. (A) dated the 3 rd August, 2009]
- Physical contact or advance
- A demand or request for sexual favours
- Making sexually coloured remarks
- Showing pornography
- Any other physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct of a sexual nature.
- unwelcome touching, hugging or kissing
- staring or leering
- suggestive comments or jokes
- unwanted or persistent requests to go out
- intrusive questions about another person’s private life or body
- insults or taunts of a sexual nature
- sexually explicit pictures, posters, screen savers, emails, twitters, SMS or instant messages.
- inappropriate advances on social networking sites
- behaviour which would also be an offence under the criminal law.
- Chairperson – Women working at senior level in the organisation
- 2 Members (at least) – Amongst employees committed to women issues, have legal knowledge or experience in social work
- 1 Member – from NGO
- Transfer the complainant or respondent to any other place
- Grant leave to the complainant for upto 3 months in addition to her entitled leave
- Restrain the respondent from reporting on the work performance/ writing confidential report of aggrieved
- Restrain the respondent from supervising academic activities of aggrieve