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NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to examine a plea alleging non-implementation of the law to prevent sexual exploitation of women at work place and issued notice to the Centre and states seeking their response on why they have not appointed officers and set up local complaint committee in each district to deal with such cases.

Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition, Redressal) Act was passed by Parliament in 2013 and the law mandates states and union territories to notify an officer in each district to deal with such cases. It has made a provision to set up a local committee at district level to receive complaints from establishments where the internal committee has not been constituted due to having less than ten workers or if the complaint is against the employer.

Alleging that most of the states and UTs have failed to implement the law in true spirit, an NGO — Initiatives for Inclusion Foundation— through its managing trustee Esha Shekhar filed a PIL seeking the apex court’s direction for enforcement of various provisions of the Act.

Advocate Sanjay Parikh, appearing for the petitioner, told a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud that protection provided to working women under the law was not reaching remote areas as the governments had not set up mechanism at local level to receive complaints of sexual harassment and take action.

“It will not be possible to effectively implement the provisions of the Act unless district officers are notified in all districts and local complaint committee(LCC) are constituted. Most of the states/UTs are non-compliant. The law cannot be effectively implemented unless the nodal officers are appointed in each district consisting of blocks, talukas, tehsil in rural or tribal areas and ward or municipality at urban areas. It is well known that the women working at the grass-root level are victims of sexual harassment but they suffer silently in the absence of any grievance redressal mechanism,” the petition said.

“It is submitted that though the law was enacted in 2013, the states/UTs are reluctant in implementing the law even after four years of enactment of law, resulting in breach of fundamental rights of women and their dignity,” it said.

The bench, after a brief hearing, agreed to examine the issue and directed the states/UTs to file their response within four weeks.

