Assessing The Effectiveness Of SEBI’s Business Responsibility And Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) Framework In Promoting Corporate ESG Compliance And Accountability In India
- IJLLR Journal
- Jan 25
- 1 min read
Aahna Dwivedi & Muskan Mahant, LL.B., Symbiosis Law School, Pune
ABSTRACT
This study is a critical review of how effective the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) framework used by SEBI is in fostering corporate Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) compliance in India. Introduced as the leading 1,000 listed companies, BRSR has now changed into the narrative reporting (Business Responsibility Reports, BRR) to the formal BRSR Core format that requires the quantifiable disclosures on the nine ESG principles. Although it has dramatically improved transparency, comparability and investor confidence, there are still issues such as uneven quality of data, insufficient third-party checks, overlaps with regulatory requirements on CSR and environmental regulations and operational barriers to small and mid-cap firms. The paper identifies the prescriptive and assurance-based model of India through a comparative perspective of world system models like the CSRD of EU, the SDR of UK and the ESG of the US. It is proposed that standardization of metrics should occur, verification and enforcement become more robust, that they should be in line with international standards, and that they should assist in supporting SMEs. The research finds that BRSR has institutionalised ESG accountability, which is a critical change of compliance-based reporting to a performance-based sustainable corporate governance.
Keywords: BRSR, ESG compliance; SEBI; Corporate sustainability; Sustainability reporting; Corporate governance; Regulatory framework, ESG disclosure; Business responsibility; Sustainability assurance.
