UPSC Prelims 2025, Question 4

The answer: II only

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), not the Reserve Bank of India, mandates the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report. SEBI introduced BRSR in 2021, replacing the earlier Business Responsibility Report, and made it mandatory from FY 2022-23 for the top 1,000 listed companies by market capitalisation, not for every listed company. This settles the first statement as incorrect, since it wrongly names both the regulator and the coverage. The second statement is correct: BRSR is built around nine principles of the National Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct and captures Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance, covering issues such as emissions, employee welfare, supply chain practices and community engagement, most of which are qualitative or non-financial disclosures rather than balance-sheet figures. Since only the second statement holds, the correct choice is the statement confined to that fact alone.

The option-by-option autopsy for this question — why each of the other three is wrong, and which neighbouring concept each one was built from — is in the app.