The West Bengal Pollution Control Board is considering finding out the environmental compliances claimed by the companies in the business responsibility sustainability reporting (BRSR) submitted to the Centre and Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI).

According to Rajesh Kumar, member secretary, West Bengal Pollution Control Board, SEBI had mandated that the top 1,000 companies in India would have to submit their BRSR and a report as to how much they have complied with the environmental, social and governance (ESG) norms.

Speaking during the 17 Environment Partnership Summit and Environment Excellence Award organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce, today, Mr Kumar pointed out, “While doing so, perhaps they (SEBI) have not taken care of what is being presently done by those agencies that are looking after the environmental aspects. I have seen the BRSR reports submitted by various companies. We want to develop a system by which we also get a meaningful result from these kinds of audit reports submitted by these companies along with their value chain partners.”

As elaborated by the member secretary, the WBPCB takes care of compliances by companies regarding waste management and other norms. The regulatory body is now considering knowing about the actual compliances of environmental initiatives taken by the companies. “We would like to know, what everybody is reporting, how much their compliance to the real environmental goals is. The BRSR reporting system has been designed in such a way that it doesn’t give the details to us.

The reports they are asking and certifying to be good are not meaningful for the pollution control board. We will have a meeting with the SEBI officials in Kolkata and talk to the SEBI representatives also about it so that we can have a system by which we would like both of us to be in sync so that we can get some good things from the corporate practices.

According to minister of state for environment department Ghulam Rabbani, the state stands eleventh in the national ranking of achieving sustainable development goals. “The global landscape of ESG is swiftly changing, presenting challenges that demand urgent attention. Worldwide, there is a universal demand for sustainability and leadership bears the key responsibility in addressing this issue,” added Mr Rabbani.