Company Law - Corporate Social Responsibility - Swach Bharat Kosh and Clean Ganga Fund included

By Vijay Kumar

AS per Section 135 of the Companies Act 2013, every Company having net worth of rupees five hundred crore or more, or turnover of rupees one thousand crore or more or a net profit of rupees five crore or more during any financial year shall spend, in every financial year, at least two per cent of the average net profits of the company made during the three immediately preceding financial years, in pursuance of its Corporate Social Responsibility Policy:

As per Schedule VII of the Act, Activities which may be included by companies in their Corporate Social Responsibility Policies are those relating to:-

(i) eradicating hunger, poverty and malnutrition, promoting preventive health care and sanitation (including contribution to the Swach Bharat Kosh set-up by the Central Government for the promotion of sanitation) and making available safe drinking water:

(ii) promoting education, including special education and employment enhancing vocation skills especially among children, women, elderly, and the differently abled and livelihood enhancement projects;

(iii) promoting gender equality, empowering women, setting up homes and hostels for women and orphans; setting up old age homes, day care centres and such other facilities for senior citizens and measures for reducing inequalities faced by socially and economically backward groups;

(iv) ensuring environmental sustainability, ecological balance, protection of flora and fauna, animal welfare, agroforestry, conservation of natural resources and maintaining quality of soil, air and water (including contribution to the Clean Ganga Fund set-up by the Central Government for rejuvenation of river Ganga);

(v) protection of national heritage, art and culture including restoration of buildings and sites of historical importance and works of art; setting up public libraries; promotion and development of traditional arts and handicrafts:

(vi) measures for the benefit of armed forces veterans, war widows and their dependents;

(vii) training to promote rural sports, nationally recognised sports, paralympic sports and Olympic sports;

(viii) contribution to the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund or any other fund set up by the Central Government for socio-economic development and relief and welfare of the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, other backward classes, minorities and women;

(ix) contributions or funds provided to technology incubators located within academic institutions which are approved by the Central Government.

(x) slum area development.

Explanation.- For the purposes of this item, the term ‘slum area' shall mean any area declared as such by the Central Government or any other competent authority under any law for the time being in force.

Now contribution to the Swach Bharat Kosh set-up by the Central Government for the promotion of sanitation and contribution to the Clean Ganga Fund set-up by the Central Government for rejuvenation of river Ganga are added to the list. The VII schedule is amended to add the words marked in red.

MoCA Notification in F.No.1/18/2013-CL-V , Dated: October 24, 2014