Following repeated instructions from the government and regulators, most of India’s top listed companies have begun to publicly disclose basic data of sexual harassment complaints at their respective workplaces, according to a PTI report.
As per guidelines issued by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), it is mandatory for all listed companies to file their Business Responsibility Reports, including the details of the sexual harassment complaints received by them. In addition to that, the Ministry of Women and Child Development also requires companies to give details about such cases under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013.
The government has also recently launched the ‘Sexual harassment electronic box’ (SHe-Box), an online complaint management system for registering complaints related to sexual harassment at the workplace.
Here are the sexual harassment statistics of some of the prominent Indian companies (as provided by them), for the year gone by:
- TCS disclosed 65 complaints of sexual harassment for the year 2016-17, of which four were pending at the end of the fiscal.
- At SBI, 21 cases of sexual harassment were reported during the year, and 15 were disposed of.
- Tata Steel said that it received 26 complaints during 2016-17, of which 19 were resolved, and seven remained under investigation.
- Wipro stated that a total of 111 complaints were raised, of which 107 were resolved.
- Mahindra & Mahindra disclosed that four complaints with allegations of sexual harassment were filed, out of which three were disposed of, and one was pending at the year-end.
- Infosys said that the total number of cases filed in the fiscal 2016-17 was 88 (a steep increase from 62 in the previous year).
- Kotak Mahindra Bank disclosed having received total 19 complaints during 2016-17, out of which 12 were disposed of, and inquiries were in progress in the pending seven cases at the close of the year.
- Cipla said that a total of three cases were reported during 2016-17, and that all cases have been satisfactorily resolved.