[Rajat Maloo is a III year B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) student at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore] Recently, large corporations such as Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, and Facebook amongst several others have been expected to fulfil a different kind of social responsibility. Unilever and Johnson & Johnson were some of the few companies who have either discontinued or altered...
SEBI Working Group Report on Social Stock Exchange
[Rongeet Poddar is a 5th year student at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences] The Working Group Report on Social Stock Exchange constituted by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has evaluated the prospect of introducing a ‘Social Stock Exchange’ (SSE). As acknowledged in the Report published on 1 June 2020, the Finance Minister of India had previously called...
Is the Indian CSR Legal Framework COVID Ready?
[Ayush Vijayvargiya is a corporate lawyer in Mumbai and a graduate of NALSAR University of Law] Since the onset of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown in India, there has been constant public demand for increased spending by the Government to address shortage of medical supplies in hospitals, food and monetary allowance to urban and rural poor, shelter and food for homeless people, funding to...
New CSR Amendment Brings New Challenges for Implementing Agencies
[Tanya Nair is a 4th year B.A.LLB.(Hons.) student at NLIU, Bhopal] On 13 March 2020 the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) invited comments from the public concerning the draft Companies (Corporate Social Responsibility Policy) Amendment Rules, 2020. The draft amendment, once notified, will make significant changes to the corporate social responsibility policies of various companies. The MCA has...
National Action Plan on Business and Human rights: A Critique
[Vedangini Bisht is a third year student at National Law University Delhi] In November 2018, at the Business and Human Rights Forum in Geneva, India formally announced that it would come up with a National Action Plan (NAP) on Business and Human Rights. This makes India one of 45 countries to have a NAP on business and human rights or those that are in the process of finalising a NAP. The aim is...
Continued Uncertainties in the CSR Regime
[Roshni Menon is a an Associate at Samvad Partners, Bangalore] On July 31, 2019, the Parliament passed several amendments to the Companies Act, 2013 .The amendments were brought in to reduce cumbersome compliance, rationalise penalties, and crack the whip on shell companies. They also introduced several revisions to the existing outline of corporate social responsibility (CSR) by inserting penal...
Decriminalisation of Company Law: A Welcome Change
[Arun Kumar is a 4th-year student of NLIU Bhopal] The Company Law Committee (CLC) in its November 2019 report (CLC Report) to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has recommended amendments to 46 penal provisions in the Companies Act, 2013 (CA, 2013). This is in addition to the 16 offences already decriminalised by the Companies (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA, 2019). India is making rapid strides...
Social Stock Exchange – A Breakthrough for the Impact Investing Sector
[Aditya Bhayal is a IV year student at NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad] In this year’s Budget Presentation, the Finance Minister announced the introduction of the Social Stock Exchange (SSE) in the Indian capital market. Following this, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) recently set up a panel to provide recommendations on the working and implementation of this concept. In...
CSR Becomes Stringent, With Penal Consequences
The concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) took on a different hue in India with the enactment of the Companies Act, 2013. Section 135 of the legislation introduced a requirement on large companies to spend two percent of their average profits over the preceding three years towards certain statutorily defined causes. Although often mistakenly considered to be mandatory, the statutory...
Highlights of Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2019
[Vinod Kothari is a corporate and insolvency practitioner at Vinod Kothari & Co and can be reached at [email protected]] The Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2019 has been placed before the Parliament on 25 July 2019. While the Bill, 2019 is largely to enact into parliamentary law the provisions already promulgated by way of Presidential Ordinance, the Bill also brings some interesting...
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