The Centre established a Group of Ministers to recommend measures to effectively implement the law against sexual harassment at the workplace and to strengthen the legal and institutional framework in response to the #MeToo campaign.
The GoM to come up with a comprehensive plan within three months and devise ways to ensure its time-bound implementation.
Earlier, the Centre had set up a panel of legal luminaries, recommended by Ms. Gandhi on the lines of the Justice Verma Committee, to do the above task. (However, now that panel has been quietly junked and task is transferred to GoM)
Group of Ministers (GoM) are ad hoc bodies or interMinisterial panel formed to give recommendations to the cabinet on certain emergent issues and critical problem areas.
. Ministers heading the concerned ministries were inducted into the relevant GoMs and when the advice is crystallised they were disbanded.
The system of GoMs was intended to operate as a single window clearance on crucial issues related to various ministries with the objective of expediting policy making and good governance
Both Group of Ministers (GoMs) and Empowered GoMs (EGoMs) get appointed under the Government of India’s Transaction of Business Rules 1961, which at para 6 (4) provides that ‘Ad hoc Committees of Ministers including Group of Ministers may be appointed by the Cabinet, the Standing Committees of the Cabinet or by the Prime Minister for investigating and reporting to the Cabinet on such matters as may be specified, and, if so authorised by the Cabinet, Standing Committees of the Cabinet or the Prime Minister, for taking decisions on such matters
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