SC sets up committee to deal with sexual harassment complaints
New Delhi: The Supreme Court today constituted a 10-member committee headed by its woman judge, Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai, to deal with complaints of sexual harassment within its precincts.Chief Justice of India P Sathasivam formed
Prof Dr G Mohan Gopal is also a Member of Academic Council, National Judicial Academy India.
Member, Judges' Inquiry Committee appointed by the Chairman, Rajya Sabha (2011).
The setting up of the committee comes close on the heels of a law intern's allegation of sexual harassment against a recently-retired Supreme Court judge.
The allegation is being probed by a three-judge panel set up on November 12.
Women lawyers including Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaising had urged CJI to reconstitute the committee to go into the law intern's allegation saying it should be in accordance with the Vishakha judgement, whose guidelines require that the panel should be presided by a woman and at least two-third of its members should be women.
The Supreme Court in October had put on its website the guidelines framed to deal with sexual harassment complaints within its precincts.
As per the notification on “The Gender Sensitisation & Sexual Harassment of Women at the Supreme Court of India (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal), Regulations, 2013” “aggrieved woman means, in relation to the Supreme Court, any female, of any age, whether employed or not, who claims to have been subjected to any act of sexual harassment by any person in the Supreme Court of India precincts but does not include any female who is already governed by the Supreme Court service regulations.”