BRSR Assurance

BRSR Core assurance is governed by SEBI's phased mandate under the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015, originally introduced by circular SEBI/HO/CFD/CFD-SEC-2/P/CIR/2023/122 dated 12 July 2023 and subsequently eased by a further circular dated 28 March 2025 ("Measures to facilitate ease of doing business with respect to framework for assurance or assessment..."). The applicability glide path, based on market capitalisation ranking among listed entities required to report BRSR, is: top 150 listed entities from FY 2023-24, top 250 from FY 2024-25, top 500 from FY 2025-26, and top 1,000 from FY 2026-27 — each subsequent year folding in the next band without dropping entities already covered.

The March 2025 amendment gave covered entities a choice between "assurance" and "assessment" for BRSR Core and value-chain ESG disclosures: where the assurance route is chosen, it must be reasonable assurance (the higher of the two IFAC-recognised levels, requiring the provider to gather sufficient evidence to issue a positive opinion) rather than limited assurance; where the assessment route is chosen instead, it follows criteria to be issued by the Industry Standards Forum (ISF) in consultation with SEBI. Value-chain BRSR disclosures (for upstream/downstream partners each representing 2% or more of the listed entity's purchases/sales by value) remain voluntary for FY 2025-26 reporting of FY 2024-25 data under the same March 2025 relaxation. Given the still-evolving ISF assessment criteria and the fact that this is a market-cap-linked (not universal) mandate, applicability for any specific listed entity should be confirmed against its current market-capitalisation ranking at the relevant financial year-end before scoping.

BRSR — the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report — is the sustainability disclosure framework that SEBI made mandatory for the top 1000 listed entities by market capitalisation under Regulation 34(2)(f) of the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations 2015, from FY 2022-23 onwards. The BRSR Core — a subset of key performance indicators — carries an assurance requirement: SEBI phased in independent assurance of the BRSR Core for the top listed entities (VERIFY: the phased applicability timeline and entity thresholds in the SEBI circular of 14 July 2023 on BRSR Core assurance). Assurance is a chartered-accountant-led engagement, conducted under the assurance framework of the ICAI.

The BRSR has moved sustainability reporting in India from narrative to numbers. The report covers governance, environmental performance — energy, emissions, water, waste — and social performance — workforce, communities, value chain. The BRSR Core reduces the framework to a defined set of KPIs with a prescribed assurance scope, so that the numbers reported are actually verified. For the companies within its ambit, this is now a listed-entity compliance, not a voluntary ESG exercise.

The risk of treating BRSR as a fill-in-the-blank document is that assurance finds the gaps. Assurers test the reported KPIs against the underlying data — if the energy data, the workforce data or the value chain data does not support the reported figure, the assurance conclusion reflects it, and that conclusion goes into the annual report and to the exchanges. A qualified or adverse assurance finding on a mandatory ESG disclosure is a governance event for a listed company.

This service is for listed companies within the BRSR and BRSR Core ambit, and their value chain partners who must supply data. We map the disclosure requirements under Regulation 34(2)(f) of the LODR Regulations, build the data capture from the company's systems, draft the BRSR and the BRSR Core disclosures, and provide the independent assurance engagement to the prescribed standard.