"Coal India's CSR Spending Evolves Into Sector-Wide Framework"
CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility)
statutory obligation under Section 135 to spend on community welfare, not company benefit.
Schedule VII
list of eligible CSR activities under the Companies Act, 2013, including health and education.
Corporate philanthropy at Coal India Limited predates the statutory CSR regime. Under the Community Development (CD) Policy, 2005, CIL's subsidiaries supported villages within an 8 km radius of mining operations through drinking water facilities, health camps, and small infrastructure works. Annual spending under this voluntary regime ranged from about Rs. 82 crore to Rs. 409 crore in the years just before CSR became a legal requirement. This voluntary phase showed genuine community engagement but lacked a consistent year-on-year framework.
The Companies Act, 2013 changed this. Section 135 requires companies meeting specified thresholds, a net worth of Rs. 500 crore, a turnover of Rs. 1,000 crore, or a net profit of Rs. 5 crore, to spend at least 2% of average net profit of the preceding three years on activities listed in Schedule VII. The law explicitly excludes any expenditure that benefits the company or its own employees from counting as CSR; only spending that helps the wider community qualifies. This distinction between community-facing welfare and employee-facing benefit is the single most tested feature of India's CSR rules, and CIL's programme is structured entirely around outward-facing, community-focused delivery.
CIL, a Central Public Sector Enterprise under the Ministry of Coal and the world's largest coal producer, has layered its own institutional policy on top of the statutory floor: at least 80% of annual CSR expenditure is directed within a 25 km radius of mines and establishments, with priority to Project Affected Areas, and the remainder funds state or national initiatives. As a direct result, more than 90% of CIL's CSR spending stays within coal-bearing states, keeping the benefit close to where mining's social costs are actually felt.
CSR governance under Section 135 rests on a Board-level CSR Committee that approves an annual policy and monitors spending against Schedule VII themes: health, education, environment, rural development, and poverty alleviation among others. CIL's own architecture builds several additional layers onto this floor: Annual Action Plans shaped by community needs, MoUs with implementing partners that specify deliverables and timelines, phase-wise fund release tied to milestones and Utilisation Certificates, and Impact Assessment Guidelines that make third-party evaluation compulsory for larger projects. Statutory, internal, and CAG audits sit on top of this.
Numbers show the scale involved. From FY 2014-15 to FY 2025-26, CIL spent cumulatively well above its statutory requirement, with annual outlay growing from around Rs. 500 crore to close to Rs. 1,000 crore, placing it among the largest corporate CSR spenders in the country. …
With reference to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) rules in India, consider the following statements:
1.CSR rules specify that expenditures that benefit the company directly or its employees will not be considered as CSR activities.
2.CSR rules do not specify minimum spending on CSR activities.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
With reference to Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013, consider the following statements:
1.Every company with a net worth of Rs. 500 crore or more must undertake CSR spending.
2.Expenditure benefiting a company's own employees does not qualify as CSR spending.
3.The Act specifies no minimum percentage of profit to be spent on CSR.
How many of the above statements are correct?
Match the following Coal India Limited CSR initiatives with their primary focus area:
Initiative:
1.NIRMAN
2.Thalassemia Bal Sewa Yojana
3.Nanha Sa Dil
4.Digital Vidya
Focus Area:
A.Congenital heart disease screening
B.Smart classrooms and STEM labs
C.Support for UPSC aspirants from mining districts
D.Bone marrow transplants
Under Coal India Limited's CSR policy architecture, which of the following statements is/are correct?
1.At least 80% of annual CSR expenditure is directed within a 25 km radius of mines and establishments.
2.More than 90% of CIL's total CSR expenditure is incurred within coal-bearing states.
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
The 'Community Development (CD) Policy' that governed Coal India Limited's welfare activities before statutory CSR was introduced covered villages within what radius of its mining operations?
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