The POSH Inquiry Timeline: Understanding the 90-Day Rule

Perhaps no single procedural requirement under the POSH Act generates more anxiety for HR teams and Internal Committee members than the 90-day timeline. Get it wrong, and you risk both a legally vulnerable finding and, in cases that become public, serious reputational damage for slow-walking a complaint. Here's exactly how the clock works.

Where the 90-day rule comes from

Section 11(4) of the POSH Act requires the Internal Committee (or Local Committee) to complete the inquiry within a period of 90 days from the date the complaint is received. This is distinct from — and comes after — the separate 3-month window a woman has under Section 9 to actually file the complaint from the date of the incident (extendable by a further 3 months at the Committee's discretion, if satisfied that circumstances prevented her from filing earlier).

Breaking down what happens inside the 90 days

The 90-day period is not a single undifferentiated block — several sub-steps happen within it, each with implications for how the time is actually used:

• Day 0: Complaint received by the IC/LC.
• Within 7 days: The Committee must send a copy of the complaint to the respondent, who then has 10 days to respond.
• Conciliation option: Before initiating an inquiry, and only if the complainant requests it, the Committee may attempt conciliation between the parties — but critically, conciliation cannot be used to extract a monetary settlement, and once conciliation is attempted and a settlement is recorded, no further inquiry is conducted on those terms.
• Inquiry proceedings: If conciliation isn't pursued or fails, the Committee proceeds to inquiry — recording statements, examining evidence and witnesses, and giving both parties a reasonable opportunity to be heard, including the right to be assisted (though not represented by a lawyer, per Section 11(2), except in limited circumstances).
• Report submission: The Committee must complete the inquiry and submit its report within the 90-day window, with findings and recommendations to the employer.

What happens after the report — is that also within 90 days?

No — a distinction employers frequently get wrong. The 90-day clock governs completion of the inquiry and submission of the report. Once the Committee's report is received, Section 13(2)/13(3) gives the employer a further 60 days to act on the recommendations — implementing findings, for instance initiating disciplinary action if harassment is proven. These are two separate timelines, and confusing them leads some employers to believe they have far more runway than they actually do for the inquiry phase itself.

Can the 90 days be extended?

The Act does not provide an explicit, open-ended extension mechanism for the inquiry-completion timeline the way it does for the initial filing window. In practice, Committees facing genuine delays — a witness unavailable, a member's resignation requiring reconstitution (see our post on what to do when an external member resigns mid-inquiry), or complex evidence requiring more time — should document the specific reasons for delay contemporaneously. While this doesn't create a formal legal extension, a well-documented, justifiable delay is treated very differently — by courts, by the employer, and by both parties — than an inquiry that simply drifted past 90 days with no record of why.

Common causes of delay we see in practice

• Difficulty scheduling all IC members, particularly the external member, for hearings.
• Respondent using procedural objections or repeated requests for adjournment to slow proceedings.
• Witnesses reluctant to appear or provide statements, requiring repeated follow-up.
• Committees treating conciliation as an open-ended, informal negotiation rather than a bounded step with its own timeline.
• Poor initial complaint intake, leading to ambiguity about the actual "Day 0" the 90 days runs from.

Practical steps to stay within the timeline

• Calendar the entire 90 days the moment a complaint is received — don't wait for the first hearing to start tracking.
• Set internal sub-deadlines for sending the complaint to the respondent, completing statement recording, and drafting the report, rather than treating 90 days as one undifferentiated deadline.
• Document every adjournment or delay with a reason, contemporaneously — not reconstructed after the fact if challenged.
• Keep conciliation genuinely time-bound — if the complainant requests it, set a short window rather than letting informal discussions absorb weeks of the 90-day clock.

For companies without a shared physical office where scheduling is a common bottleneck, our post on running an Internal Committee for remote and WFH teams covers how to keep virtual hearings on schedule.

Key takeaway

The 90-day rule is one of the few genuinely hard deadlines in the POSH Act's inquiry process, and it starts running the moment a complaint is received — not when the Committee gets around to its first meeting. Employers and Committees that build a disciplined internal calendar from day one, and document any deviation as it happens, are in a far stronger position than those treating 90 days as a soft, aspirational target.