State-wise CSR Spending Report for 2024-25

Maharashtra emerged as the dominant leader in CSR expenditure for the 2024-25 fiscal year, recording a total spend of ₹8,630.8 crore. This figure is nearly double that of the second-highest state, Gujarat (₹4,549.1 crore), underscoring Maharashtra's position as the primary hub for corporate social responsibility initiatives in India.

The top five regions, which collectively drive a significant portion of the national CSR footprint, include:

• Maharashtra: ₹8,630.8 crore
• Gujarat: ₹4,549.1 crore
• Karnataka: ₹3,395.43 crore
• Delhi: ₹2,752.75 crore
• Tamil Nadu: ₹2,738.49 crore

A steep decline in spending is evident as the rankings progress, with Uttar Pradesh (₹2,212.68 crore) being the only other state to exceed the ₹2,000 crore threshold. In contrast, several North Eastern states and Union Territories, such as Arunachal Pradesh (₹40.06 crore) and Manipur (₹33.73 crore), sit at the lower end of the spectrum, highlighting a heavy concentration of CSR capital in industrialized and urbanized economic centers.

For the 2024-25 fiscal year, CSR activity is currently dominated by Non-PSU entities, with no participation or spending data yet recorded for Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs).

• Non-PSU Contribution: A total of 29,176 Non-PSU companies have contributed ₹34,836.92 crores toward CSR initiatives.
• PSU Participation: The data shows null values for both the number of participating PSUs and their corresponding expenditure, indicating either a lack of reporting or a complete absence of activity for this category in the current cycle.

This distribution highlights that the private sector is currently the sole driver of CSR funding for the year, representing 100% of the recorded ₹34.8 billion investment. The absence of PSU data suggests a significant gap in public sector engagement or reporting that warrants further investigation to determine if these entities are meeting their statutory obligations.

Actual CSR spending consistently falls short of prescribed targets across all major states and administrative regions, with the largest net spending gaps concentrated in India's primary industrial and economic hubs. Delhi, Maharashtra, and Gujarat exhibit the most significant deficits, collectively accounting for over ₹428 billion in unspent prescribed funds.

The disparity is most pronounced in the following areas:

• Delhi: Records the largest net spending gap at ₹199.85 billion, spending only roughly 69% of its ₹643.35 billion prescribed amount.
• Industrial Leaders: Despite having the highest overall expenditure, Maharashtra and Gujarat still face substantial shortfalls of ₹122.64 billion and ₹105.84 billion, respectively.
• Centralized Funds: The "Pan India (Other Centralized Funds)" category shows a significant deficit of ₹80.64 billion, suggesting that even multi-state or national-level allocations struggle to meet prescribed benchmarks.
• High Compliance: Conversely, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh demonstrate much tighter alignment between prescription and reality, with gaps of approximately ₹10.36 billion and ₹9.18 billion respectively, despite their large total budgets.

These gaps indicate that while corporate social responsibility activity is high in developed states, the volume of prescribed expenditure—driven by corporate profitability in these regions—is outpacing the actual implementation of CSR projects.

The current data indicates a significant reporting anomaly, as the total expenditure attributed to local areas of operation (100.08 trillion) substantially exceeds the total reported CSR expenditure of 9.35 trillion. This discrepancy results in a calculated local area proportion of 1,070.8%, which is mathematically impossible under standard accounting practices.

Because the local area spending figure is reported as roughly 10.7 times the total budget, the resulting proportion for broader state-level projects is a negative value (-970.8%). Consequently, the data provided is insufficient to determine the true distribution of CSR funds; the figures likely reflect a data entry error or a misclassification of "local area" spending that includes non-CSR capital or overlapping regional accounts.

In the 2024-25 period, Education and Health Care emerged as the primary drivers of development funding, collectively accounting for over 21,000 crore INR in outlays. Education led all sectors with a total spend of 12,910.76 crore, followed by Health Care at 8,105.92 crore. Together, these two sectors represent a significant concentration of capital compared to secondary priorities like Environmental Sustainability (3,215.67 crore) and Livelihood Enhancement Projects (2,465.84 crore).

The funding landscape shows a steep drop-off after the top five sectors:

• Primary Tier: Education and Health Care are the only sectors exceeding 5,000 crore.
• Secondary Tier: Rural Development (2,383.43 crore) and Vocational Skills (1,672.91 crore) maintain substantial support.
• Niche Allocations: Highly specific social issues receive significantly less funding, such as Slum Area Development (37.33 crore) and the Clean Ganga Fund (16.51 crore).

While the data provides a comprehensive breakdown of spending by sector, it does not contain state-level identifiers or geographic distributions. Consequently, it is not possible to determine how these allocations vary by state from the provided results.

Utilization rates across districts for the Agro Forestry sector show extreme variance, characterized by significant over-spending relative to initial outlays and a high frequency of data gaps where outlays were not recorded. While some districts like Adilabad and Amritsar show perfect alignment with 100% utilization, many others report spending that far exceeds their projected budgets.

Key observations from the district-level data include:

• Significant Over-utilization: Several districts report spending thousands of percent over their outlay. For instance, Ahilyanagar spent 1.5 crore against a 0.03 crore outlay (5,000%), and Ahmedabad spent 2.4 crore against a 0.06 crore outlay (~4,000%). ~
• High-Volume Outliers: Bhavnagar stands out for its scale, spending 35.25 crore against a 9.72 crore outlay (362.65%), representing the largest absolute expenditure among the initial set.
• Budgetary Misalignment: A large number of districts, including Ananthapuramu (5.13 crore spent) and Amreli (1.73 crore spent), have recorded total expenditures despite having a recorded project outlay of zero. This results in null utilization rates and suggests that project spending is frequently decoupled from formal district-level outlay projections in this sector.
• Near-Target Execution: Barmer demonstrates the closest large-scale adherence to a planned budget, spending 2.55 crore against a 2.6 crore outlay (98.08%).

The business implication is a lack of standardized financial forecasting for Agro Forestry, where actual capital requirements often materialize independently of the initial district outlays.

CSR spending is heavily concentrated in Public Listed companies, which consistently outspend Private Unlisted companies across all top-performing states despite having a significantly smaller company count. While Private Unlisted companies represent a larger volume of entities—such as in Maharashtra, where they outnumber Public Listed firms 31,709 to 13,245—their total contribution is substantially lower, highlighting a higher per-company spending intensity among listed public firms.

Key spending patterns across the top jurisdictions include:

• Maharashtra & Pan India Dominance: Public Listed companies in these categories are the primary drivers of CSR, spending 95,365.38 and 100,471.91 respectively. In Maharashtra, Public Listed firms spend over 3.2x more than their Private Unlisted counterparts.
• Efficiency Gap: In Karnataka, only 4,520 Public Listed companies generated 54,807.27 in CSR spending, whereas 14,997 Private Unlisted companies contributed just 16,655.50.
• Regional Consistency: This trend repeats in Delhi and Gujarat, where Public Listed firms contribute roughly 4 to 5 times the total CSR amount of Private Unlisted firms.

This profile suggests that regulatory listing requirements and the scale of public corporations are more significant drivers of CSR capital than the sheer number of private enterprises operating in a state.