TCS, Infosys, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank fail to carry out this big responsibility

According to the provisions (Section 135) of the Companies Act, the firms having net worth of Rs 500 crore or more, or a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore or more, or a net profit of Rs 5 crore or more have to spend 2% of their profit on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) every fiscal, but there are top guns of India Inc that have failed to meet this responsibility, according to a DNA Money report.
 
1-State-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), IT giants Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Infosys, lenders ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank and HDFC, and telecom major Bharti Airtel are among top firms that have not spent 2% of their profits on social welfare activities.
 
2- Among top-100 companies which have spent less than half of the funds earmarked for CSR during financial year (FY) 2015-16 are Bharti Airtel (22%), Idea (33%), Hindustan Zinc (37%), BHEL (41.8%) and Cairn India (48%), as per the documents seen by DNA Money.
 
3- The zero spenders during this period include Essar Steel, Alok Industries, Micromax and DLF Commercial Developers.
 
4- About Rs 13,828 crore was spent by over 19,000 companies during FY16. In the subsequent year, only Rs 4,719 crore was spent by 6,286 companies. Over 9,200 eligible companies did not spend a single penny on CSR during FY16 as compared to 346 firms in FY17.
 
5-The government has “issued scrutiny letters to about top 1,000 companies for non-compliance of the CSR law during FY16. Next step is to send show-cause notices before court cases are filed against violators,” a senior official from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) told DNA Money.
 
7- This is part of the first-ever strict compliance of the CSR law, four years after it was implemented in April 2014. There are 3,380 companies which spent less than the prescribed limit during 2015-16, while 1,633 firms spent more than the prescribed limit.
 
8- During 2016-17, ICICI Bank, HDFC, Axis Bank, YES Bank, IndusInd Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Volkswagen were among some 3,700 companies which failed to spend entire 2% of their profits on social welfare activities, as per government records.
 
9-In the cases of CSR violations during 2015-18, the government is mulling to ask companies to deposit the unspent money in the government fund. However, for future purpose, merely giving an explanation for not undertaking expenditure on CSR would no longer qualify as compliance of the law, sources added. 
 

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10- The companies spend CSR funds in about 10 areas that include poverty eradication, preventive healthcare, sanitation, safe drinking water, education, gender equality, environmental sustainability and protection of national heritage.