Compliance Challenges And Regulatory Framework For ESG Reporting By Indian Companies: A Corporate Governance Perspective.
This article is written by Taskin Akhtar, pursuing B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) from National University of Study and Research in Law (NUSRL), Ranchi.
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reporting has emerged as a critical dimension of corporate governance in India, driven primarily by the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) framework. Yet the legal architecture undergirding ESG disclosure remains deeply fragmented: liability for assurance failures is undefined, greenwashing lacks a consolidated statutory response, and the fiduciary dimensions of climate risk have produced no Indian judicial precedent.
This article argues that India’s ESG compliance challenge is not simply one of corporate incapacity or data deficit, it is, at its core, a problem of legal design. By examining the BRSR framework alongside the Companies Act, 2013, SEBI’s evolving regulations, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and emerging global instruments, the article identifies six structural fault lines in the regulatory architecture: assurance liability, greenwashing enforcement, directors’ climate duties, ESG rating accountability, supply chain coercion, and cross-border regulatory conflict.
For each, the article develops original legal arguments that extend beyond existing academic commentary. The thesis is that piecemeal regulatory additions cannot substitute for coherent statutory reform that treats ESG disclosure as a distinct legal category, with its own liability norms, enforcement mechanisms, and evidentiary standards.
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