Sexual harassment of women at work places, Maharashtra tops

Maharashtra tops the chart of cases of sexual harassment of women at work places, registered at the SHe-Box, against the general perception of the state being 'safe for women'.

The data of complaints registered on this portal was released by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development on Monday.

The Sexual Harassment electronic Box or SHe-Box is an online complaint management system, developed by the Ministry, Government of India, for registering complaints related to sexual harassment at workplaces by women, including government and private employees. Once a complaint is submitted to the SHe-Box portal, it directly reaches to the concerned authority having jurisdiction to take action in the matter.

According to the data, total number of 203 cases had been disposed of so far, which includes cases under Central Government, State Government and the Private sector.

The details of number of sexual harassment complaints received from private/public entities through the SHe-Box in States/UTs since 2017 was also given in the detail in which Maharashtra showed most number of cases, i.e. 82 registered on the platform.

Uttar Pradesh was at number two with a total 65 cases registered on the SHe Box.

Delhi had 50 cases registered and Tamil Nadu had 48 cases.

The Ministry said that it expected the states to make women aware of such platform in order to strengthen the mechanism to fight against the sexual harassment at work place.

"There are states where zero complaints were registered, but that doesn't mean that there are no complaints in those states. There may be cases, but women sometimes do not register the complaint. States must encourage women to come forward and register the crime. This platform makes the registration of the crime most convenient, said a ministry spokesperson."- IANS