New Delhi, 17 March 2021: There is no provision of geo-tagging under the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) provisions of the Companies Act, 2013 (‘the Act’) and rules made thereunder, Anurag Singh Thakur, Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs has confirmed in the Parliament.
He was responding to a question asked by GM Siddeshwar, a member of Parliament from BJP representing Devangera of Karnataka. He also asked about unspent money of CSR whether the government is planning to take over unspent CSR funds of the companies.
On Tuesday, the ruling party parliamentarian GM Siddeshwar asked, "Whether the assets created under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) are geo-tagged, if so, the details thereof including the constraints to geo-tagged assets created under CSR activities?"
Responding to his query, Thakur confirmed that there is no such provision of geo-tagging projects constructed under CSR programmes.
He said, "There is no provision of geo-tagging under the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) provisions of the Companies Act, 2013 (‘the Act’) and rules made thereunder. CSR is a Board driven process and the Board of the company is empowered to plan, decide, execute and monitor CSR activities of the company based on the recommendations of its CSR Committee."
However, he gave details of geo-tagging of construction done under MGNREGA.
He said, "All assets created under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) are geo-tagged under Geo-MGNREGA initiative. As on date, more than 4.32 crore number of assets have been geo-tagged under MGNREGS. The geo-tagged assets data under MGNREGS is available on Bhuvan Portal of National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), ISRO in public domain."
GM Siddeshwar also asked about unspent CSR money. He asked, "whether it is a fact that the Government has, henceforth, decided to take over the unspent CSR funds of the companies?"
Responding to this, the minister said that the sub-sections (5) and (6) of Section 135 of the Act provides for the treatment of unspent CSR amount by the companies.
