MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE (SHRI PANKAJ CHAUDHARY)
(a) The Government provides the broad framework for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) through Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013 (‘Act’), Schedule VII of the Act and Companies (CSR Policy) Rules, 2014. Under the Act, CSR is a Board driven process and the Board of the company is empowered to plan, decide, execute and monitor CSR activities based on the recommendation of its CSR Committee.
For Central PSUs, the Department of Public Enterprises has issued guidelines to all administrative Ministries and CPSEs for adopting a theme based focused approach every year on CSR expenditure by CPSEs. These guidelines inter-alia provide that CSR expenditure for such thematic programmes should be around 60% of annual CSR expenditure of CPSEs and the aspirational districts identified by NITI Aayog may be given preference.
The CSR architecture is disclosure based and CSR mandated companies are required to file details of CSR activities annually in the MCA21 registry. Whenever any violation of CSR provisions is reported, action against such non-compliant Companies are initiated as per provisions of the Act after due examination of records and following due process of law.
(b) to (d): All data related to CSR filed by companies in MCA21 registry, including company-wise & state-wise, is available in public domain at www.csr.gov.in. As per the Act, companies are required to hold Annual General Meeting (AGM) within six months from the end of financial year. Thereafter, financial statements and board report containing disclosure about CSR, are to be filed in MCA21 within 30 days of the AGM. Thus, the CSR data for the Financial Year 2020-21 is not available. However, as per filings made by the Companies in the MCA21 registry, the CSR spent by all the companies including Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) for the financial year 2019-20 is given in following table:
Nature of Company FY 2019-20
No. of Companies Total Amount Spent
(Rs. Crore)
Public Sector Undertakings 439 4650
Non-PSUs 20910 16581
Grand Total 21349 21231
(Data upto 31.03.2021) [Source: National CSR Data Portal]
(e): The Ministry of Corporate Affairs vide General Circular no.10/2020 dated 23.03.2020 had clarified that CSR funds may be spent by the companies for various activities related to COVID-19. However, there is no provision for allocation of CSR funds for government run programmes under the existing framework.
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