POSH Annual Report and Filing: Requirements, Due Dates and Compliance Guide

Most POSH questions we receive between December and February are about this report, and most of them start from the same two wrong assumptions: that it is filed with the MCA, and that 31 January is a statutory deadline. Neither is correct. Here is the accurate position.

What is a POSH annual report?

Section 21 of the POSH Act provides that the Internal Committee — or the Local Committee, as the case may be — shall in each calendar year prepare an annual report and submit it to the employer and the District Officer. The District Officer then forwards a brief report on the annual reports received to the State Government.

Two features are worth noting immediately:

• The period is the calendar year, not the financial year. The report covers 1 January to 31 December. This is one of the very few Indian compliances that runs on the calendar year, and it is a frequent source of internal confusion in finance teams working to an April–March cycle.
• It is a compliance report, not a case file. It reports numbers and activity. It does not — and must not — disclose the identity of the complainant, the respondent or the witnesses, which is protected under Section 16.

Who is responsible for preparing it, and who submits it?

The Internal Committee prepares the report. That responsibility sits with the committee, led by the Presiding Officer — not with HR as a matter of law, although HR usually assembles the underlying data.

Submission runs to two recipients: the employer and the District Officer. In practice, the employer's compliance or HR function submits the report to the District Officer on the committee's behalf, with the committee's sign-off. The employer also has an independent duty under Section 22 to reflect POSH case numbers in the annual report of the organisation.

The District Officer is a District Magistrate, Additional District Magistrate, Collector or Deputy Collector notified for the district under Section 5. Some States route the function through the Women & Child Development department or the Labour department; check your State's notification.

What the report must contain

Rule 14 of the POSH Rules prescribes the contents:

That is the statutory minimum. In practice, District Officers frequently ask for more, and a well-prepared report anticipates it:

• Name, address and nature of the establishment, and total number of employees
• Date of constitution of the IC and its current composition — names, designations and the external member's affiliation
• Confirmation that the POSH policy is in place and has been disseminated
• Dates and modes of awareness sessions, with participant numbers
• Details of any complaint carried forward from the previous year
• Contact details of the Nodal Officer, where the State requires one

A note on "nil" reports

If no complaints were received during the year, the obligation does not disappear. The report is still prepared and submitted, recording that the number of complaints was nil, that the IC is duly constituted, and what preventive and awareness activity was carried out during the year. A nil report is positive evidence of compliance — an absent report is evidence of nothing.

Reporting to the appropriate authority: timelines in practice

The POSH Act and the POSH Rules do not prescribe a single nationwide due date for submission of the annual report. Section 21 says the report is prepared "in such form and at such time as may be prescribed", and Rule 14 goes on to prescribe the contents — but not a date.

What has developed instead is district-level practice:

• 31 January of the following year is the most widely followed cut-off across Indian districts, and it is the safest default to build into your compliance calendar.
• Some districts differ. Gurugram, for example, has consistently used a later date of 28 February. Certain districts in Maharashtra and Telangana have used different windows in earlier years.
• Some States now issue their own formats, Google Forms, dedicated email addresses or portal-based routes, and update them annually.

The practical rule: treat 31 January as your internal deadline, and verify the current notification issued by the District Officer for each district in which you have a workplace before you submit. Relying on last year's route without checking is a common cause of a technically missed filing.

Multi-district and multi-branch organisations

Because the Internal Committee obligation attaches to every office or administrative unit, reporting follows the same geography.

• An organisation with qualifying workplaces in three different districts generally files with three District Officers. A head-office filing does not automatically cover the branches.
• Where several branches sit within the same district, employers may file one consolidated report covering them, or separate reports per branch, depending on the district's format and internal convenience — but branch-wise underlying records should be maintained either way.

If you operate across States, put a district-wise filing matrix in your compliance calendar. This is where large organisations most often fall short.

The employer's own disclosure: Section 22 and the Board's Report

Section 22 places a separate duty on the employer: include the number of cases filed and their disposal in the annual report of the organisation, or — where no annual report is required to be prepared — intimate the number of cases to the District Officer.

For companies, this now connects directly to the Companies Act, 2013.

Before 14 July 2025, Rule 8(5)(x) of the Companies (Accounts) Rules, 2014 required the Board's Report to carry a statement that the company had complied with the provisions relating to constitution of the Internal Complaints Committee. A single declaratory sentence sufficed.

With effect from 14 July 2025, the Companies (Accounts) Second Amendment Rules, 2025 expanded that requirement. The Board's Report must now also state:

• the number of complaints of sexual harassment received during the year;
• the number of complaints disposed of during the year; and
• the number of cases pending for more than ninety days.

The same amendment inserted a new clause requiring a statement on compliance with the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, and introduced an electronic extract of the Board's Report to be filed along with AOC-4 and its variants.

A specimen disclosure now reads along these lines:

• Rule 8 does not apply to a One Person Company or a small company (Rule 8(6)). Their Board's Report follows the abridged list in Rule 8A. That changes the disclosure format only — the POSH Act obligations themselves are unaffected.
• The Companies Act disclosure relates to the financial year, while the Section 21 report relates to the calendar year. Your complaint register must be capable of producing both cuts.

Specified listed entities separately report sexual harassment complaint data in the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report under SEBI's listing framework — a third, distinct cut of the same underlying register.

POSH annual report vs MCA/ROC filings: the difference

There is no POSH return, POSH form or POSH e-filing on the MCA portal. Any service provider telling you otherwise is describing something that does not exist.

Common mistakes

• Assuming the financial year applies. The Section 21 report is calendar-year. Data cut from April–March is the wrong data.
• Skipping the nil report. Zero complaints does not mean zero filing.
• Filing only from the head office while branches in other districts go unreported.
• Naming the parties. Identities are protected under Section 16. The report carries numbers and categories, not names.
• Reporting awareness sessions that cannot be evidenced. If you state four workshops, be able to produce four dated attendance records.
• No acknowledgement retained. Whether you file physically, by registered post or by email, retain the stamped receipt, the postal acknowledgement or the sent email with attachment. That receipt is the only proof you filed.
• A one-line Board's Report disclosure post-July 2025. The old declaratory sentence is now incomplete.
• Inconsistent numbers between the IC report, the Board's Report and — for listed entities — the BRSR.
• An IC whose three-year tenure quietly expired during the reporting year, making the constitution statement inaccurate.

Consequences of non-compliance

Failure to comply with the Act or the Rules — which includes the reporting obligations — attracts a fine of up to ₹50,000 under Section 26. A repeat offence can attract twice the punishment, and cancellation or non-renewal of licences or registrations required to carry on business.

Since July 2025 there is a second exposure for companies: an incorrect, incomplete or missing POSH disclosure in the Board's Report is a Companies Act default in its own right, attracting penalty under Section 134(8) on the company and its officers in default.

There is also a practical exposure that arrives sooner than either. Investor diligence, client empanelment and RFP processes increasingly ask for the last filed annual report and the acknowledgement. Not having one delays transactions.

Practical compliance checklist

Who should consider professional assistance?

• Employers filing across more than one district, where formats and routes differ
• Companies whose Board's Report now needs verified complaint data after the July 2025 amendment
• Organisations that have never filed and need to regularise their position
• Employers with a complaint pending beyond ninety days, where the disclosure needs careful drafting
• Groups reconciling POSH numbers across an IC report, a Board's Report and a BRSR

Frequently asked questions