India’s evolving ESG rulebook comes into focus

Posted on December 14, 2025 by Editor

A recent SCC Online article by Arin Chatterjee takes stock of how environmental, social and governance expectations have been built into Indian corporate governance. Rather than relying on a single ESG statute, India is developing a hybrid regime that combines company law, securities regulation, market practice and an increasingly active judiciary.

Chatterjee highlights how the Companies Act has pushed ESG from the periphery to the boardroom, from mandatory CSR spending and wider stakeholder duties for directors, through to energy and environmental disclosures and requirements for women on boards. On the supervision side, the Securities and Exchange Board of India has progressively tightened expectations, moving from early Business Responsibility Reports to today's Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting, and the more data rich BRSR Core.

Set against this is a growing body of case law and climate litigation, with courts and tribunals treating environmental and social obligations as part of core fiduciary responsibility rather than optional extras. That combination of law, regulation and judicial pressure is steadily turning ESG from a branding exercise into a governance norm in India.

For digital reporting, the direction is clear: even though the country's data holdings are ahead of the pack, more quantitative ESG data, more assurance, and growing convergence with international frameworks will demand consistent, machine readable disclosures, where robust taxonomies and XBRL based reporting help make Indian ESG information even easier to analyse and compare.

Read more about it here.