The Supreme Court has put on its website the guidelines framed to deal with sexual harassment complaints within its precincts.
The notification on "The Gender Sensitisation & Sexual Harassment of Women at the Supreme Court of India (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal), Regulations, 2013" has been published in government's Gazette and it has been enforced.
As per the notification, "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."
It has also directed the apex court in its administrative jurisdiction to take note of the guidelines and to arrange that they are promulgated and given wide publicity.
In the regulation, "habitual respondent" would mean a person against whom a previous complaint of sexual harassment has been received by the Gender Sensitization and Internal Complaints Committee (GSICC) on earlier occasion, irrespective of whether the matter was resolved with or without an inquiry and except where the respondent has been exonerated in the previous complaint.
The committee will be constituted by the Chief Justice of India to be known as GSICC which would consist of a minimum of seven members and a maximum of 13.
The committee will include one or two apex court judges, in terms of the 1997 Vishaka judgement and one of them would be the Chairperson of the the Committee.
The guidelines said majority of the committee members shall be women.
