Ch. VIII · §21
Chapter VIII
Miscellaneous
Section
Chapter VIII · Miscellaneous
Section 21
Committee to submit annual report
Transcribed from the official India Code source for reading and comparison. PIH plain-language guidance is editorial and separate; this page is not legal advice.
Plain Language
Every Internal Committee and Local Committee must prepare an annual report each calendar year in the prescribed form and submit it to both the employer and the District Officer.
The District Officer must forward a brief report on the annual reports received to the State Government. This forwarding duty is separate from the committee's own report preparation and submission duty.
Committee work does not end with case closure. Annual reporting is a formal statutory output that the law treats as mandatory.
The report must be in the prescribed form, meaning the applicable rules govern its content and format.
Why It Matters
Annual reporting creates a documented record of the committee's work, enabling oversight by both the employer and the District Officer.
The District Officer's forwarding duty creates a further government-level reporting link without transferring the committee's preparation duty to the District Officer.
Without a formal reporting obligation, committees could operate in obscurity and accountability gaps would go undetected.
The committee report, the employer report under Section 22, and government data under Section 23 are distinct reporting layers; the Act does not collapse them into one generic annual return.
Practical Example
Scenario: An Internal Committee handles four complaints during the year, resolves three, and has one pending at year-end.
Outcome: The committee must prepare and submit the annual report. The prescribed contents, including any pending-case fields, come from the applicable rules rather than from Section 21 alone.
Scenario: A Local Committee receives no complaints during a calendar year.
Outcome: It must still prepare and submit the prescribed annual report under Section 21 read with Rule 14. In practice this is commonly recorded as a nil report, although Section 21 itself does not use that phrase.
Who Must Act
ic member
- Maintain year-round records so the annual report is not reconstructed from memory at year-end.
- Prepare the annual report in the prescribed form within the prescribed timeline.
- Submit the report to both the employer and the District Officer.
employer
- Receive or obtain the committee's annual report and separately prepare the employer reporting required by Section 22.
- Ensure the IC has administrative support to maintain records and prepare the report.
district officer
- Monitor timely submission of reports by the Local Committee as required under Section 20(a).
- Forward a brief report on the annual reports received to the State Government.
Compliance
Prepare annual report in the prescribed form each calendar year
Actor: Internal Committee / Local Committee · Rule: Section 21
Submit annual report to the employer and the District Officer
Actor: Internal Committee / Local Committee · Rule: Section 21
Forward a brief report on received annual reports to the State Government
Actor: District Officer · Rule: Section 21(2)
Timelines
Annual report submission: Each calendar year, at the prescribed time
The committee must prepare and submit the annual report in the form and at the time prescribed by the applicable rules.
Common Mistakes
Treating the annual report as optional when no complaints were received — Section 21 still requires the prescribed annual report, read with the Rule 14 reporting framework; the no-complaint position should be recorded within that framework.
Waiting until year-end to compile records instead of maintaining them throughout the year.
Submitting the report only to the employer but not to the District Officer, or vice versa.
Practical PIH resources
These are separate PIH editorial, training, or support destinations. They are not substitutes for the official Act source or a statutory complaint forum.
Source & Status
- Official source
- India Code, Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India
- Source version
- India Code PDF — last updated 31 August 2021
- Source location
- India Code PDF, p. 12
- Retrieved
Statutory blocks are kept separate from PIH plain-language and operational guidance. The reading copy is not legal advice.
Legal review status: counsel-reviewed. All sections have valid documentary counsel evidence and publication signals are enabled.
Judicial material: no verified judicial interpretation is published in this reading copy. Judicial analysis is a separate layer from the statutory transcription and PIH editorial guidance.