The South Indian Artistes’Association (SIAA) or Nadigar Sangam has set the ball rolling for the formation of an internal complaints committee (ICC) to handle complaints of sexual harassment from its members. A group of actors from the association met on Tuesday to hold a preliminary discussion regarding the same.
As of now, the committee includes actors Karthi, Suhasini Mani Ratnam, Rohini, Kitty alias Raja Krishnamoorthy, Poochi Murugan, Lalitha Kumari and Krishna Raveendran. In a short press release, the association had said, “A special committee has been set up by #NadigarSangam to safeguard and protect the self-respect, public life evaluation and self-esteem of artistes.”
Explaining this further, actor Nasser who heads the Nadigar Sangam told TNM, "This is the official internal complaints committee. It will take care of the welfare and protection of women. Everybody has such a committee and we are trying to implement it too. It will be based on Vishaka guidelines but because this profession is different from any other occupations we will have to add a lot of features to it."
The actor further added that the functioning of the committee and its members will be announced shortly.
"There will be a woman presiding officer and an external member in the committee. We are still trying to iron out details. The film industry is very different and we have to take that into account," says Nasser.
Two members who were party of the meeting on Tuesday confirmed that this was indeed a gender sensitive internal complaints committee but could not offer more details regarding the composition or mechanism as of now.
This first step to actually form the ICC comes a month after actor Nayanthara was slut-shamed by Radha Ravi for the roles she had chosen in her films. In a statement responding to his comments, the lady superstar had asked the Nadigar Sangam - "Will you set up the Internal Complaints Committee as per the Hon’ble Supreme Court’s dictum and commence an internal inquiry as per Vishakha Guidelines?"
In October 2018, following weeks of allegations made against celebrities from the Tamil film industry, as part of the ‘Me Too’ movement online, the Nadigar Sanagam had convened a Special Working Committee meeting of the actor’s body. A two-point statement released to the press the. read, “Although there are Sangam laws to safeguard the rights and self-respect of our members, a legally-mandated ‘Vishaka committee’ will be constituted.”
The Internal Complaints Committee is to be made up of a majority of women members. The committee would include a psychologist as well, the statement said. The Nadigar Sangam assured that the ICC would be a neutral body.