Referring to itself as ‘Bhishma Pitamaha’ of Mahabharat, the Bombay High Court on Monday said it cannot use its powers everywhere. It made the observation while refusing to hear a plea seeking for members of Internal Complaints Committee set up under Prevention of Sexual Harassment at Workplace Act in private companies to be treated as public functionaries and be provided with certain safeguards.
A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice M G Sewlikar asked the petitioner Janaki Chaudhary to approach the Supreme Court or competent authority. “Have you read or seen Mahabharat? In that Bhishma Pitamaha had several powers…but when tDraupadi de-robing incident happened, he could not use any of his powers. We are like Bhishma Pitamaha…cannot use our powers everywhere. We are also subordinate to someone,” Chief Justice Datta said. Following this, Chaudhry’s advocate Abha Singh withdrew the petition and said she would approach the apex court or authority. On the previous hearing too the court had said it cannot pass directions to the Centre to legislate as it would amount to interference.
The petition had claimed members of such committees of private firms are not provided with any safeguard so as to enable them to act without fear and favour. “Members are tasked with the statutory duty of adjudicating sexual harassment complaints while being on the payroll of the company and can be terminated. This creates a serious conflict of interest and constrains the member from taking free, fair and impartial decisions,” it said.
If the member takes a decision that goes against the will of the senior management then they are susceptible to victimisation and targeting, the petition added.
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