TNM investigation on ONGC funds to Sangh-linked orgs mentioned in JPC on Corporate Laws Bill

The News Minute’s investigation that exposed how 14.7% of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) was given to organisations linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was mentioned in front of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) on the Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026. As the committee discussed increasing the threshold of CSR funding that requires independent oversight, certain members cited TNM’s investigation, to highlight the need for auditing CSR funding and having independent directors on the CSR committee. The Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, proposes key changes to the CSR rules under the Companies Act, 2013, purportedly to reduce “compliance burden.” However, some members argued against reducing accountability for CSR expenditure, as it could result in misuse of funds. TNM reported in July that the ONGC, a state-owned company and one of India's largest public sector undertakings, gave Rs 668.01 crore of CSR funds to 20 registered organisations linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) over 10 years. This was roughly 14.7% of the Rs 4,531 crore it disbursed to more than 2,000 organisations between 2015 and 2025. Nine of the 20 organisations are directly affiliated to the Sangh, nine were started by or are led by people with RSS ties, and two have worked with RSS. After deliberations, the JPC on the Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026, endorsed amendments that will take an estimated 11,204 companies out of India's mandatory CSR regime, and allow thousands more to spend CSR money without an independent director checking where it goes.The estimate comes from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, which gave it to the committee when asked what the change would cost. Those 11,204 companies would have been required to spend about Rs 1,281.67 crore on CSR in 2025-26. Under the amended law, they will not have to spend any of it. The Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2026 rewrites the Companies Act, 2013 and the Limited Liability Partnership Act, 2008. It was introduced in the Lok Sabha on March 23 and referred the same day to a 31-member JPC, chaired by BJP MP Sudheer Gupta. The panel took 130 written submissions and heard 83 stakeholders across 24 sittings before presenting its report to Parliament on August 3.Two of its members – Menaka Guruswamy and Varun Chaudhry – filed notes of dissent. One of them has asked for the CSR clause to be struck out of the Bill entirely.The existing lawCSR spending is presently mandatory in India under Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013, for companies with a net worth of over Rs 500 crore, a turnover of over Rs 1,000 crore, or a net profit of over Rs 5 crore. Such companies must spend at least 2% of average net profits from the previous three years on CSR. They must set up a CSR committee of its board, with at least one independent director, to decide what gets funded.When the CSR outlay is Rs 50 lakh or less, the board itself takes on the CSR committee's functions, while also deciding who gets the funds. What Clause 43 changes for CSRUnder clause 43 of the Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, the minimum net profit to fall under CSR is raised from Rs 5 crore to Rs 10 crore. This is what takes the 11,204 companies out of the regime. The CSR outlay threshold, below which no CSR committee is required, is increased from Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore. The JPC in its report said that revising the CSR threshold would allow many small and medium companies to devote more resources towards business expansion and operational efficiency, while ensuring that the CSR framework stays focused on companies with relatively greater financial capacity. However, it objected to the proposed sweeping power to exempt "such class or classes of companies as may be prescribed", saying it was “broad and lacks statutory guidance, thereby amounting to excessive delegation of legislative power.” The JPC recommended omitting the words "as may be prescribed". In the Bill, the CSR committee threshold still reads "one crore rupees or such higher amount as may be prescribed".Parliament therefore sets the figure that determines which companies must spend on CSR. The figure that determines which of them answer to an independent director can still be raised by government notification. The government also retains the power to remove entire categories of companies from the section.The dissenting MPsVarun Chaudhry, a Congress MP from Ambala, and Menaka Guruswamy, a nominated Rajya Sabha member and senior advocate, filed the two notes of dissent, both dated July 31, the day the report was adopted.Chaudhry's note attributes to stakeholders who deposed before the panel - that through these amendments, "ease of doing business may not lead to ease of doing fraud". He asks for Clause 43 pertaining to CSR to be entirely dropped. Menaka Guruswamy objected that the Bill removes a check without substituting another. Raising the threshold "without introducing any monitoring mechanism reduces accountability for CSR expenditure", she writes. Companies that no longer need a CSR committee "will continue to spend significant amounts under CSR, yet the Bill does not provide any independent mechanism to ensure that these funds reach the intended beneficiaries or are used for genuine public welfare", she said.Supervision, she wrote, was needed "to prevent CSR funds from being used in a manner that secures quid pro quos or regulatory advantages for the contributing companies". She also objected to the threshold remaining alterable. On oversight, she wrote that the CSR committee "should be made answerable to an independent body that periodically reviews whether CSR funds have been utilised for the purposes intended under the Companies Act".Menaka also noted that the Bill "delegates in more than sixty distinct places" and "leaves a very large part of the operative content to be filled in later by the executive". Among her examples was a new Section 139(12), which would allow the government to exempt unnamed classes of companies from appointing an auditor. "Nothing in the Act," she wrote, "constrains the Central Government from exempting every company in the country from a statutory audit." The JPC amended that clause. It found that extending the exemption to all companies "may have unintended implications for transparency and stakeholder protection", and confined it to private companies, so that public companies remain subject to statutory audit. Concerns raised before JPCThe possibility of CSR money being misdirected was raised before the JPC before the clause was cleared. Members noted that CSR funds "may be directed towards Government-identified projects or misused for the personal or familial interests of company promoters", and asked for independent monitoring mechanisms. The Corporate Affairs Secretary replied that an FAQ already bars CSR from being used to fill gaps in government spending and that this would be written into the rules, pointing to the disclosures companies already make - the board report, the CSR policy, certification in the auditor's report, and third-party impact evaluation for larger projects. The JPC then accepted the higher CSR committee threshold as proposed.What the ONGC case showsDuring the years when TNM found substantial donations to RSS-associated organisations, ONGC's board included several office-bearers of the ruling party. From 2021 to 2026, its CSR committee was headed by Reena Jaitly, an independent director on the ONGC board who was president of the BJP's Punjab State Mahila Morcha when she was appointed. Another BJP leader, Syam Chand Ghosh, was appointed an independent director in late 2021. In 2017, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra was made a non-official director, an appointment challenged in the Delhi High Court. ONGC spends far too much on CSR to fall below any of the revised thresholds, and remains covered by Section 135 regardless of the Bill. Its record is relevant for what it shows about the safeguard itself. The CSR committee, and the independent director on it, are the only stage at which the choice of beneficiary is examined by someone other than those making it.Under the Corporate Laws (Amendment) Bill, companies spending up to Rs 1 crore a year will not have that oversight committee at all. Their directors will select the recipients and approve the payments, with no independent director required to examine the choice, and no checks to prevent CSR money from going to organisations those directors are politically or ideologically aligned with. The government will also be able to raise the Rs 1 crore ceiling further by notification, without returning to Parliament.The spending itself will remain on the public record. Companies must still report their CSR outlays in their board reports. The Bill now returns to Parliament, where it will be taken up with the JPC’s recommendations.