<\/p>\n
\u2022 Act aimed to provide protection to women against sexual harassment at their workplace
\n\u2022 Provides a mechanism for redressal of complaints of sexual harassment.
\n\u2022 As per the Act \u201cWorkplace\u201d includes any place visited by the employee arising out of or during the course of employment, including a dwelling place or a house.
\n\u2022 Employer\u2019s premises is not restricted to the strict perimeters of the office space and could be extended beyond such physical territory.
\n\u2022 Aid of applications like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Skype etc, working in physical spaces and proximity has taken a backseat.
\n\u2022 raises the question of whether our homes or virtual reality space qualifies the test to be recognised as a \u2018workplace\u2019??
\n\u2022 any act of sexual harassment effected virtually in a home working space can be included in the notional definition of a \u2018workplace\u2019.
\n\u2022 High Court in its judgement in Saurabh Kumar Mallick v. Comptroller & Auditor General of India, said that:<\/p>\n
i) with the advent of computer and internet technology, a person can interact or do business conference with other person while sitting in some other country by means of video-conferencing.
\nii) if such an officer indulges into an act of sexual harassment with an employee, it would not be open for him to say that he had not committed the act at workplace, but at his residence and get away with the same.
\n\u2022 In the landmark case Vishaka v. the state of Rajasthan, the High Court observed that the following factors would have bearing on determining whether the act has occurred in the \u2018workplace\u2019:
\n(a) proximity from the place of work;
\n(b) control of the management over such a place\/residence where the working woman is residing; and
\n(c) such a residence has to be an extension or contiguous part of the working place.
\n\u2022 In the landmark case of Saurashtra Salt Manufacturing Co. V. Bai Valu Raja & Ors, the Supreme Court opined on the applicability of the theory of \u2018notional extension\u2019 of the employer\u2019s premises. The theory of notional extension was applicable to an employer\u2019s premises so as to include an area which the workman passes and re-passes in going to and in leaving the actual place of work. It was reasonably concluded that an employer\u2019s premises were not restricted to the strict perimeters of the office space and could be extended beyond such physical territory.
\n\u2022 In the virtual world, there is a thin line between such harassment that may occur in the course of work or employment and that which may be perceived as harassment while operating outside the physical workplace. To conclude this, keeping in mind the dynamic scope of \u2018workplace\u2019 as discussed above, the scrutiny of facts and circumstances of any complaint arising in case of employees who are working from home would be necessary to determine whether or not such complaint falls under the purview of the Act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u2022 Act aimed to provide protection to women against sexual harassment at their workplace \u2022 Provides a mechanism for redressal of complaints of sexual harassment. \u2022 As per the Act \u201cWorkplace\u201d includes any place visited by the employee arising out of or during the course of employment, including a dwelling place or a house. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sexual-harassments-of-women-at-workplace-prevention-prohibition-and-redressal-act-2013"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aracs.in\/newaracs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aracs.in\/newaracs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aracs.in\/newaracs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aracs.in\/newaracs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aracs.in\/newaracs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aracs.in\/newaracs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":614,"href":"https:\/\/aracs.in\/newaracs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613\/revisions\/614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aracs.in\/newaracs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aracs.in\/newaracs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aracs.in\/newaracs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}