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Every employer of a workplace in Noida, whatever its size or sector. Section 4(1) is unqualified — every employer of a workplace shall, by an order in writing, constitute an Internal Committee. There is no headcount threshold in that sub-section, so the eight-person studio in Sector 63 and the thousand-seat delivery centre on the Expressway are both inside the scheme; what differs between them is where a complaint is heard, not whether the Act applies.
What makes Noida distinctive is not the law — the Act is central legislation and reads the same in Sector 125 as it does anywhere else — but the shape of the workforce. IT and ITeS employers, BPO and KPO operations, electronics manufacturing units, media and production houses around Film City, and education campuses in Greater Noida all run substantial contract and third-party payroll cohorts alongside their direct staff. That is where Section 2(f) bites.
"Employee" means a person employed at a workplace for any work on regular, temporary, ad hoc or daily wage basis, either directly or through an agent, including a contractor, with or without the knowledge of the principal employer, whether for remuneration or not, or working on a voluntary basis or otherwise.
Section 2(f), POSH Act 2013Read that against a typical Noida site — facility management, security, transport, housekeeping, contract line operators, agency-supplied process staff, interns and campus trainees — and the population the Act reaches is materially larger than the payroll register shows. It changes the display obligation, the size of the training cohort, and in a dispute, whether the person in front of the committee was an employee at all. The full statutory scheme, section by section, is set out on our POSH compliance page; this page deals with how it lands on a Noida employer.
Where the offices or administrative units are located at different places, yes. The proviso to Section 4(1) provides that where the offices or administrative units of the workplace are located at different places or at divisional or sub-divisional level, the Internal Committee shall be constituted at all administrative units or offices. This is the single requirement most often missed, and Noida is where it usually surfaces, because so many companies here are the second or third site of a business headquartered somewhere else.
The pattern repeats: a Delhi or Gurugram head office constituted a committee years ago, the Noida delivery centre opened later, and nobody issued a fresh order for it. Or a company with a Sector 62 development office and a Greater Noida plant treats the two as one workplace because they share an HR function. Neither arrangement answers the proviso. The order has to exist for the unit, the composition has to work at the unit, and the display under Section 19(b) has to be at the unit.
A head office committee is not a group committee. Where offices or administrative units sit at different places, the Act asks for an Internal Committee at all of them.Proviso to Section 4(1), POSH Act 2013
There is a practical consequence beyond the order itself. Each committee carries its own three-year tenure clock under Section 4(3), its own orientation obligation under Section 19(c), and feeds its own annual report under Section 21. A company that discovers it needs four committees rather than one has not acquired four pieces of paper — it has acquired four calendars. Building those calendars once, properly, is a large part of what a compliance review is for.
Section 4(2) fixes the composition and Section 4(3) fixes the tenure. Three tests decide whether a Noida committee is validly constituted, and a defect in any of them tends to emerge at the worst moment — when a report is challenged rather than when the order is signed.
A woman employed at a senior level at the workplace from amongst the employees. Where a senior-level woman employee is not available at that unit, the provisos to Section 4(2)(a) allow nomination from other offices or administrative units, and failing that from any other workplace of the same employer — which is precisely the situation at a technical or plant-side Noida unit with a thin senior bench.
At least one-half of the total members nominated shall be women. It is a test applied across the nominated members, and it is separate from the question of who occupies the external seat.
A member from a non-governmental organisation or association committed to the cause of women, or a person familiar with issues relating to sexual harassment. Under Section 4(4) that member is to be paid such fees or allowances for holding the proceedings, by the employer, as may be prescribed.
Under Section 4(3) the Presiding Officer and every member hold office for a period not exceeding three years from the date of nomination. Where a Noida unit was set up in a hurry and the committee was constituted alongside it, the expiry usually arrives unnoticed.
The external member in a POSH committee is the seat companies find hardest to fill well, and the one that most affects how an inquiry actually runs, because it is often the only seat occupied by someone who does the process regularly. Our advocates take that seat for employers in Noida and across Delhi NCR, and where a company prefers a woman on it, the firm can nominate a woman advocate from its team. Statutorily the external member need not be a woman — the binding constraint is the one-half requirement across the nominated members. More on the external member seat.
To the Local Committee. Section 6(1) provides that the Local Committee receives complaints from establishments where the Internal Committee has not been constituted due to having less than ten workers, and also where the complaint is against the employer himself. The Local Committee is constituted at the district level by the District Officer — for Noida and Greater Noida, within the Gautam Buddh Nagar district in Uttar Pradesh.
Two points follow that employers regularly get wrong. The first is that the ten-worker figure is a routing rule in Section 6, not an applicability threshold in Section 4 — a small establishment is inside the Act, its complaints simply go elsewhere. The second is the limb about complaints against the employer: where the allegation is against the employer himself, the company's own committee is not the forum, and that holds whatever the headcount. For a founder-run business in Sector 63 or a promoter-managed plant in Greater Noida, that is not a theoretical distinction.
Section 9(1) governs the filing window in either forum: three months from the incident, or from the last incident in a series, with a discretionary extension of a further period not exceeding three months for reasons recorded in writing. Where a complaint could go to either forum, getting the routing right at the outset is worth more than any amount of correction afterwards.
Ten items, each traceable to a provision, ordered the way our team walks a Noida file — sites first, workforce second, committee third, then the recurring obligations that a one-time exercise never captures.
A written order under Section 4(1) for each office or administrative unit, applying the proviso rather than assuming a single central committee covers the campus, the plant and the back office.
Contractor, agency, ad hoc, daily wage, intern, consultant and voluntary personnel counted in. On Noida sites this is usually the difference between a comfortable number and the real one.
A woman employed at a senior level as Presiding Officer, at least one-half of the total members nominated women, and the external member seat filled.
Section 4(3) caps the Presiding Officer and every member at a period not exceeding three years from the date of nomination. Expired nominations are one of the most common findings on review.
Section 4(4) requires the member from non-governmental organisations or associations to be paid such fees or allowances for holding the proceedings, by the employer, as prescribed.
The penal consequences of sexual harassment and the order constituting the Internal Committee displayed at a conspicuous place — at each site, and on the intranet where teams are distributed.
Workshops and awareness programmes at regular intervals for employees, and orientation programmes for Internal Committee members, covering contractor cohorts and new joiners.
Section 16 prohibits publication or making known the contents of the complaint and the inquiry proceedings; Section 17 provides the penalty. Minutes, file access and mailing lists should be designed around that.
The Committee’s annual report under Section 21 and the Section 22 disclosure of the number of cases filed and their disposal, or intimation of the number to the District Officer.
Section 25 empowers the appropriate authority to call for information and inspect records. Orders, notices, training attendance, minutes and reports should be retrievable on request.
Two distinct obligations, both under Section 19(c). The employer shall organise workshops and awareness programmes at regular intervals for sensitising employees with the provisions of the Act, and shall organise orientation programmes for members of the Internal Committee. They are different sessions for different audiences: employees need to recognise conduct and know the route to a complaint; committee members have to run a statutory process to a standard that survives scrutiny.
In Noida the practical difficulty is reach rather than content. Shift-based operations, contractor cohorts that change through the year, campus intakes and rotating agency staff mean that a single annual session, however good, leaves a large share of the Section 2(f) workforce untrained. Sessions are delivered on site at Noida and Greater Noida premises — in-person attendance is straightforward from the firm's Delhi chambers — or virtually where teams are distributed, with the committee orientation run separately.
Alongside training sit the other Section 19 duties: providing a safe working environment, displaying the penal consequences and the order constituting the Internal Committee at a conspicuous place, providing the committee with facilities, assisting in securing the attendance of respondents and witnesses, making information available to the committee, assisting a woman who chooses to file a complaint in relation to the offence under any other law, treating sexual harassment as misconduct under the service rules, and monitoring the timely submission of reports by the committee.
Section 26(1) makes non-compliance, including failure to constitute the Internal Committee, punishable with fine which may extend to fifty thousand rupees. The figure is not what concentrates a board's attention; Section 26(2) is. On a subsequent conviction for the same offence, the employer is liable to twice the punishment which might have been imposed on a first conviction, subject to the maximum provided for that offence, and to cancellation of the licence or withdrawal, non-renewal or approval, or cancellation of the registration required for carrying on the business or activity. For a licensed or registered operation, that is a going-concern consequence, not a fine.
Section 25 gives the appropriate authority power to call for information and to inspect records, so the file has to exist before it is asked for. Section 27(1) provides that no court shall take cognizance of an offence under the Act save on a complaint made by the aggrieved woman or a person authorised by the Internal Committee or the Local Committee, and Section 28 confirms that the Act is not in derogation of any other law.
On the state of implementation, the Supreme Court in Aureliano Fernandes v. State of Goa, Civil Appeal No. 2482 of 2014, decided 12 May 2023, set aside an inquiry for procedural infirmity, recorded serious implementation gaps in the POSH Act across the public and private sectors, and issued directions aimed at effective implementation, including verification that Internal Committees are constituted and that their details are published. That judgment is why a committee existing only on paper, or a report whose procedure cannot be defended, is a live exposure for a Noida employer today rather than a dormant one.
Unified Chambers and Associates is a partner-led team of advocates and associates, with chambers at the Delhi High Court complex. Noida and Greater Noida sit within comfortable reach for in-person work — committee orientation, employee workshops, sitting as external member, board-level briefings — while drafting, multi-unit constitution and reporting run the same way wherever the offices are.
Before anything is drafted, our team maps the offices and administrative units in Noida, Greater Noida and elsewhere, and counts the workforce on the Section 2(f) definition rather than the payroll register. Everything downstream — how many committees, how many display boards, how many training cohorts, how many annual reports — falls out of that map.
Drafting the written order under Section 4(1) for each unit, testing composition against Section 4(2), and diarising the three-year tenure under Section 4(3). Where committees already exist but were built at different times by different teams, reconstitution usually means aligning seats and orders across units rather than starting again.
Our advocates sit as the external member on Internal Committees for employers in Noida and Delhi NCR, attending proceedings in person where the site is in NCR. Where a company prefers a woman on that seat, the firm can nominate a woman advocate from its team.
Employee workshops and awareness programmes under Section 19(c), delivered on site at Noida and Greater Noida premises or virtually, with separate orientation for Internal Committee members. Committee orientation is a different session from employee awareness, because the committee has to run a statutory process, not merely recognise conduct.
Procedural guidance from receipt of the complaint under Section 9, through the Section 10 position that conciliation happens only at the aggrieved woman’s request and never on a monetary settlement as its basis, the ninety-day inquiry under Section 11(4), interim relief under Section 12, the ten-day report under Section 13(1) and employer action within sixty days under Section 13(3).
The Section 21 annual report, the Section 22 disclosure, the POSH statement in the Board’s Report under the Companies (Accounts) Rules, and readiness for a Section 25 call for information. Where a report is challenged, appeals under Section 18 and writ proceedings before the High Court are handled by the same team.
Engagement is on an annual retainer, scoped to workforce size and number of offices, and is discussed at the outset. Companies that would rather have a standing legal function across employment, data protection and commercial matters can read about the firm's fractional general counsel arrangement, into which POSH work is commonly folded. The deep statutory detail behind everything on this page — section by section, with the complaint-to-appeal timeline — is set out on the firm's POSH compliance page.
Senior Partner Advocate Subodh Bajpai (LLM, MBA XLRI) leads the team that advises on these mandates, with advocates and associates on each engagement.
If you run an office or administrative unit in Noida, that unit has its own obligations, whichever city the head office sits in. The proviso to Section 4(1) of the POSH Act provides that where the offices or administrative units of the workplace are located at different places or at divisional or sub-divisional level, the Internal Committee shall be constituted at all administrative units or offices. A Delhi head office does not discharge the Noida unit’s requirement. Our advocates work out of the Delhi High Court complex and attend Noida sites in person, so the two are handled together rather than as separate mandates.
The Act applies to it. Section 4(1) says every employer of a workplace shall, by an order in writing, constitute an Internal Committee, and that sub-section carries no headcount threshold. The figure of ten sits in Section 6, which provides that the Local Committee receives complaints from establishments where the Internal Committee has not been constituted due to having less than ten workers, and also where the complaint is against the employer himself. So a small Noida establishment is not outside the Act — its complaints route to the Local Committee for the district, and the employer’s duties, including a safe working environment, continue to apply.
Yes. Section 2(f) defines an employee as a person employed at a workplace for any work on regular, temporary, ad hoc or daily wage basis, either directly or through an agent including a contractor, with or without the knowledge of the principal employer, whether for remuneration or not, or working on a voluntary basis or otherwise. That wording matters a great deal in Noida, where facility, security, housekeeping, logistics, plant and BPO operations frequently run on contractor and third-party payroll arrangements. Scoping a POSH programme to the direct payroll alone under-counts the workforce the Act actually reaches.
It depends on whether those premises are separate offices or administrative units. The proviso to Section 4(1) is drafted around offices or administrative units located at different places or at divisional or sub-divisional level, and where that description fits, an Internal Committee is required at all of them. A company running a Sector 62 development centre and a separate Expressway-corridor delivery unit as distinct administrative units is on notice of that requirement; a single premises split across two floors is a different question. It is a question of how the units are actually organised, and it is worth settling in writing before a complaint arrives rather than after.
The Local Committee is constituted at the district level by the District Officer — for Noida and Greater Noida, that is the Gautam Buddh Nagar district in Uttar Pradesh. Under Section 6(1) it receives complaints from establishments where an Internal Committee has not been constituted because the establishment has less than ten workers, and complaints made against the employer himself. Employers should note the second limb: a complaint against the employer does not go to the company’s own Internal Committee, regardless of headcount.
Section 4(2) requires a member from amongst non-governmental organisations or associations committed to the cause of women, or a person familiar with issues relating to sexual harassment. Advocates practising in this area are commonly nominated on the second footing. Under Section 4(4), that member is to be paid such fees or allowances for holding the proceedings of the Internal Committee, by the employer, as may be prescribed. Our advocates take external member seats, and where a company prefers a woman on that seat, the firm can nominate a woman advocate from its team. Statutorily the external member need not be a woman; the binding constraint is that at least one-half of the total members nominated shall be women.
Section 9(1) allows a written complaint to the Internal Committee, or to the Local Committee where none has been constituted, within three months from the date of the incident, and in the case of a series of incidents within three months from the date of the last incident. The Committee may, for reasons to be recorded in writing, extend that period by a further period not exceeding three months. Once the complaint is in, the inquiry is to be completed within ninety days under Section 11(4), the report of findings goes to the employer within ten days of completion under Section 13(1), and the employer is to act on the recommendation within sixty days under Section 13(3).
Section 26(1) makes non-compliance, including failure to constitute the Internal Committee, punishable with fine which may extend to fifty thousand rupees. Section 26(2) is the provision with commercial consequences: on a subsequent conviction for the same offence the employer is liable to twice the punishment which might have been imposed on a first conviction, subject to the maximum provided for that offence, and to cancellation of the licence or withdrawal, non-renewal or approval, or cancellation of the registration required for carrying on the business or activity. Section 25 separately empowers the appropriate authority to call for information and inspect records.
Section 19(c) requires the employer to organise workshops and awareness programmes at regular intervals for sensitising employees with the provisions of the Act, and orientation programmes for members of the Internal Committee. The Act sets the obligation as a recurring one rather than a single event, and it is two obligations, not one — employee awareness and committee orientation are separate. For Noida employers with high joiner volumes and rotating contractor cohorts, a training calendar that only catches the annual all-hands tends to leave a large part of the Section 2(f) workforce untouched.
Yes, in two places. Section 22 of the POSH Act requires the employer to include in its report the number of cases filed, if any, and their disposal under the Act in the annual report of the organisation, or where no such report is required to be prepared, to intimate the number of cases to the District Officer. Separately, under the Companies (Accounts) Rules a company’s Board’s Report carries a statement on compliance with the POSH Act and constitution of the Internal Committee, and listed entities disclose sexual harassment complaint numbers in annual business-responsibility reporting. The Internal Committee’s annual report under Section 21 should therefore be closed out before the reporting cycle does.
Whether the Noida unit needs its own Internal Committee, an external member seat has to be filled, a training calendar has to reach contract cohorts, or an inquiry is already under way, our partner-led team can take it from where it stands.
This page is general legal information about the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 and the services the firm provides. It is not legal advice, and no advocate–client relationship arises from reading it. Advice on any particular workplace depends on its own facts.