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Lewd remarks on campus will be crime

The government is planning to bring universities and colleges under the cover of the proposed law that aims to prevent sexual harassment at workplace.

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The government is planning to bring universities and colleges under the cover of the proposed law that aims to prevent sexual harassment at workplace.

Based on the suggestions made by the National Commission for Women, the women and child development (WCD) ministry has asked the law ministry to include graduation, post-graduation students and research scholars under the ambit of the new law by  including a separate clause.

The proposed Sexual Harassment at the Workplace (Prevention) Bill, which at present covers only women employed in the government, private and unorganised  sectors, would also provide protection to foreign women students in India and would be applicable to minority institutions as well.

“There has been an increase in the number of complaints from educational institutions. In many cases, research scholars and students have claimed to be facing sexual harassment. There is a need to define sexual harassment in educational institutions since it is different from that which takes place in conventional offices,” said a senior official of WCD ministry.

Delhi University (DU) itself, which has over 50,000 students taking admissions every year, had more than two dozen complaints of sexual harassment in the past two years, forcing the central university to put in place strong mechanisms to curb the menace in its corridors and classrooms. Among these, complaints were also from a US student who had enrolled in St Stephen’s College for a short-duration course in Sanskrit.

The provisions of the Sexual Harassment at Workplace (Prevention) Bill are of civil in nature which means the offender cannot be sent to jail. However, he has to pay monetary compensation.

The employers or the authorities can take further action by demoting the offender, withdrawing increments or terminating services. In fact, a professor in the mathematics department of DU for the first teacher to be sacked last year after he was found guilty of sexually harassing his student while many were placed under suspension till the completion of inquiry.
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