S.S. Rana & Co. has been listed among the Top Firms for India in the Mondaq Thought Leadership Awards, Spring 2025. The firm’s article on the Hema Committee report into the issues faced by women in Malayalam cinema, by Vikrant Rana, Anuradha Gandhi and Isha Sharma, placed first for India in Employment and HR and second for India across all topics.
About the Mondaq Thought Leadership Awards
Mondaq is an online publisher of legal, regulatory and financial commentary written by law firms and advisers around the world, and its awards site is co-branded with The Legal 500. Its Thought Leadership Awards recognise the authors whose articles readers turn to most.
Who qualifies: The awards draw on articles published on Mondaq by contributing firms and their authors, with separate results for each country and for a range of topics.
How winners are chosen: Mondaq decides the awards on total readership during the award period.
The format: For each country, Mondaq names the top authors across all topics and the top three placings in each topic, and lists the Top Firms whose authors earned those placings.
What the award recognises
The recognised article, The Report Of The Expert Committee Constituted By The Government Of Kerala On Various Issues Faced By Women In Cinema, was published on Mondaq on 29 October 2024. It explains:
Why the committee was formed: Women working in Malayalam cinema formed the Women in Cinema Collective in 2017 and petitioned the Kerala government, which set up a three-member expert committee chaired by Justice K. Hema, a former judge of the High Court of Kerala, with a retired bureaucrat and a senior film artist.
How the committee worked: The committee used anonymous questionnaires, group meetings and individual statements, relied on direct evidence rather than hearsay, and kept identities confidential to protect witnesses.
What it found: It identified sexual harassment as the most serious issue facing women in the industry, along with unsafe working conditions, lack of basic facilities on set, pay disparity, the absence of written contracts, online harassment and the threat of informal bans that keep women from speaking out.
What it recommended: Finding the existing legal framework inadequate for the industry, the committee proposed a dedicated statute and a tribunal to hear complaints from women in cinema.
Workplace sexual harassment law in India
The POSH Act: The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 requires every employer with 10 or more employees to set up an Internal Committee, adopt a written policy and run awareness programmes. Complaints from smaller workplaces, or against the employer, go to a Local Committee set up by the district.
Compliance under scrutiny: In Aureliano Fernandes v. State of Goa (2023), the Supreme Court of India found serious gaps in how the Act was being implemented and directed governments and organisations to make sure Internal Committees are properly constituted.
Where the Act falls short: The Hema Committee report highlights a structural gap: in project-based industries like cinema, harassment can begin at auditions or casting calls, before an employment relationship exists, and outside any single employer’s workplace.
Criminal law: Sexual harassment and assault are also offences under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, which replaced the Indian Penal Code on 1 July 2024.
About the authors
Vikrant Rana, Managing Partner: Vikrant leads S.S. Rana & Co., a full-service IP and corporate law firm founded in 1989 and headquartered in New Delhi, and writes regularly on legal developments across IP, corporate and regulatory law.
Anuradha Gandhi and Isha Sharma: Anuradha Gandhi and Isha Sharma of S.S. Rana & Co. co-authored the article.
Recognition in 2025
| Award or ranking | Recognition | Edition |
| Mondaq Thought Leadership Awards, India | S.S. Rana & Co.: Top Firms | Spring 2025 |
| Mondaq Thought Leadership Awards, India | #1, Employment and HR; #2, All Topics | Spring 2025 |
| Chambers Asia-Pacific | S.S. Rana & Co.: Band 3, Intellectual Property (India) | 2025 |
| WTR 1000 | Vikrant Rana: Silver; Lucy Rana, Rupin Chopra, Arpit Kalra: Recommended | 2025 |
| IBLJ Law Firm Awards | Startups (advising startup companies) | 2025 |
See the Mondaq Thought Leadership Awards for India, Spring 2025 and the Employment and HR results, and our pages on the article’s #2 placing across all topics and #1 placing in Employment and HR for Vikrant Rana and for Anuradha Gandhi and Isha Sharma. Read about the firm’s 2025 rankings in Chambers Asia-Pacific and the WTR 1000, and its IBLJ Law Firm Award 2025. Each recognition is recorded on our Awards page.
We congratulate Vikrant, Anuradha and Isha, and thank the readers in India and around the world who engaged with their work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Mondaq Spring 2025 SSR
Yes. S.S. Rana & Co. is listed among the Top Firms for India in the Mondaq Thought Leadership Awards, Spring 2025.
“The Report Of The Expert Committee Constituted By The Government Of Kerala On Various Issues Faced By Women In Cinema”, by Vikrant Rana, Anuradha Gandhi and Isha Sharma, published on Mondaq on 29 October 2024. It placed first for India in Employment and HR and second for India across all topics.
Mondaq decides the awards on total readership of articles published on its platform during the award period, with results for each country and for a range of topics.
It is the report of a three-member expert committee set up by the Government of Kerala, chaired by Justice K. Hema, a former judge of the High Court of Kerala, to study the issues faced by women in the Malayalam film industry. A redacted version was made public in August 2024. It identified sexual harassment as the most serious problem and recommended a dedicated law and tribunal for the industry.
The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 requires every employer with 10 or more employees to set up an Internal Committee to receive and inquire into complaints, to have a written policy and to run awareness programmes. Complaints from smaller workplaces go to a Local Committee set up by the district.
The report found that in cinema, harassment often begins before any employment relationship exists, for example at auditions or casting calls, so it falls outside a framework built around the workplace. It also pointed to project-based work and the absence of formal contracts.
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