India: report and recommendations on corporate social responsibility

The committee formed last year by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs to review the corporate social responsibility framework has published its report and recommendations: see here (pdf).

Among the recommendations are those concerning section 135 of the Companies Act 2013, which introduced, for companies of a certain size, mandatory spending on corporate social responsibility activities and the formation of a corporate social responsibility committee. The report recommends, for example, that the section 135 obligation should not apply to newly incorporated companies. It also recommends extending the current CSR regime to limited liability partnerships and, for smaller companies, relaxing the requirement to form a separate corporate social responsibility committee (for such companies the board would carry out the functions of the committee).