Schedule VII at a glance: what CSR money can be spent on

Schedule VII of the Companies Act, 2013 is the list of activities a company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy may include, and so the list of what CSR money can be spent on. It has thirteen items, ranging from hunger, health and education to the environment, heritage, sports, rural development, disaster management and, since 27 May 2026, the Social Stock Exchange.

Every rupee a company counts towards its CSR obligation under Section 135 must be relatable to one of these items. This page sets out all thirteen in plain words, with examples of projects that fit, then explains how the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) says the list should be read and what it doesn’t allow. It’s a reference for CSR teams checking a project and for NGOs mapping a proposal. The detailed guides on each area are linked below the table.

The thirteen items

The wording below follows the official text closely; the examples are illustrations, not a checklist.

Item (ix)(b) names the bodies precisely: autonomous bodies under the Department of Atomic Energy, the Department of Biotechnology, the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Pharmaceuticals, the Ministry of AYUSH and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, and four other bodies: DRDO, ICAR, ICMR and CSIR.

Where to read more

• Item (i): health, hunger, sanitation and drinking water
• Item (ii): education, skills and livelihoods
• Item (iii): gender equality, older people and inclusion
• Item (iv): the environment and animal welfare
• Item (v): heritage, art, culture and libraries
• Items (vi) to (viii): veterans, sports and government funds
• Item (ix): research, innovation and incubators
• Items (x) to (xii): rural development, slums and disaster relief
• Item (xiii): the Social Stock Exchange

How to read the list: liberally

The MCA has said since June 2014, in General Circular 21/2014, that the items are broad and should be read generously. Its current FAQs, in General Circular 14/2021, repeat the point. FAQs are the Ministry’s reading of the law rather than law, but they show how the ministry that enforces Section 135 reads it.

In practice, an activity doesn’t have to be named in the Schedule to qualify. Menstrual hygiene kits for girls in government schools aren’t mentioned, for example, but they serve health, sanitation and gender equality, all of which are. The question is whether the activity genuinely serves one of the subjects, not whether its exact words appear.

Reading liberally doesn’t mean reading loosely. The FAQs are just as clear that CSR shouldn’t be treated as a way to fill “resource gaps in Government Schemes” (FAQ 3.17), and the CSR Rules exclude some activities outright, whatever item they might seem to fit.

The main purpose test

A useful way to apply the Schedule is to ask what an activity is mainly for. If its main purpose falls within an item and it serves the public, it can count, even if the company also benefits incidentally. If its main purpose is the company’s own business, staff or marketing, it doesn’t.

Three ways to spend under Schedule VII

The FAQs describe three routes (FAQ 3.14):

1. Activities: projects in Schedule VII areas, run by the company itself or through an eligible implementing agency, an organisation that carries out CSR projects for a company. This is how most CSR money is spent. See ways to implement CSR.
2. Contributions to the funds Schedule VII names: the Swachh Bharat Kosh (item (i)), the Clean Ganga Fund (item (iv)), the PM’s National Relief Fund, the PM CARES Fund, and other central government funds notified by the MCA for the welfare of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, other backward classes, minorities and women (item (viii)).
3. Contributions under item (ix) to the incubators, research projects and research institutions it lists.

What Schedule VII doesn’t allow

Fitting an item isn’t enough on its own. Rule 2(1)(d) of the CSR Rules leaves six kinds of activity out of the definition of CSR, whatever item they seem to match:

• activities in the company’s normal course of business;
• activities outside India, except training Indian sports personnel who represent a state, a union territory or India;
• contributions to political parties, directly or indirectly;
• activities that benefit the company’s own employees, unless designed for the public with employees as incidental beneficiaries;
• sponsorship for marketing benefit; and
• activities required by another law in force in India.

Some kinds of spending also never count, such as the value of employee volunteering time, goods given in kind at a notional value and contributions to an organisation’s corpus. Our guide to what doesn’t count as CSR covers all of these, and capital assets in CSR explains who may own buildings and equipment that CSR money pays for.

How Schedule VII has changed

Schedule VII is part of the Act, but the central government can amend it by notification under Section 467, without a new Act of Parliament; each change is then laid before both Houses. That is why it has grown from the original list.

Item (vi) was also widened to cover veterans of the Central Armed Police Forces and Central Para Military Forces. The MCA has also issued circulars on particular cases. In March 2020, for example, General Circular 10/2020 confirmed that spending on COVID-19 was eligible under items (i) and (xii). The history behind these changes is in a short history of CSR in India.

Schedule VII items aren’t the portal’s sectors

The National CSR Portal, where the government publishes companies’ CSR filings, sorts spending into about 29 “development sectors”, such as education, health care, vocational skills and art and culture. Those are reporting categories, not legal items: Schedule VII still has thirteen. When a report says CSR “now covers 28 sectors”, it is describing the portal, not a change in the law. For the national figures, see India’s CSR in numbers.

Tagging projects to Schedule VII

Every project in a company’s annual action plan should name the Schedule VII item it falls under, and the item appears again in Form CSR-2. A few habits help:

• Tag the item at the start, in the proposal, the agreement and the plan, so every report uses the same one.
• Pick the item that matches the main purpose. A school sanitation project could be item (i) or (ii); choose one and say why.
• Tag the change you want, too. Many companies also tag one to three Sustainable Development Goal targets, which describe the result rather than the eligibility. See CSR and the SDGs.
• For NGOs: say which item your project falls under in the first page of a proposal. It saves the CSR team a step, and shows you know the rules. See writing a CSR proposal.