A disclosure about the use of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds by state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) has raised a larger and uncomfortable question about the relationship between public-sector institutions and organisations linked to the RSS.
According to an investigation published by The News Minute, ONGC provided ₹670.97 crore to 20 organisations identified as having links with the Sangh ecosystem between 2013 and 2025. Of this, ₹668.01 crore was disbursed between 2015 and 2025. The recipients were not all directly affiliated with RSS: nine were described as directly affiliated with the Sangh, nine others were organisations started or led by individuals with RSS connections, and two had worked with the RSS.
The numbers are significant not merely because of their size, but because ONGC is not an ordinary private corporation. It is a major state-owned public-sector enterprise, and its financial resources ultimately have a public character. That makes the question of whom it funds, why it funds them and how those decisions are made a matter of legitimate public scrutiny.
The central question, therefore, is not whether organisations associated with RSS are legally entitled to receive CSR money. The more important question is whether a public-sector company is applying transparent, objective and ideologically neutral criteria when deciding which organisations receive hundreds of crores of rupees.
ONGC’s CSR annual reports show that between 2015 and 2025, the company spent approx.₹4,531 crore across more than 2,000 organisations and projects. The ₹668.01 crore identified as going to the 20 Sangh-linked organisations therefore amounted to roughly 14.7% of its CSR expenditure during that period.
It would be inaccurate to suggest that the entire CSR budget of ONGC was handed over to RSS-linked organisations. It wasn’t. The overwhelming majority of the company’s CSR spending went elsewhere. But that does not make the ₹668 crore figure insignificant.
For a public-sector company, the question is not simply how much money was spent, but how beneficiaries were selected and whether comparable organisations from across India’s diverse social landscape received funding on an equally transparent basis.
CSR is supposed to address social-development needs. Public-sector CSR cannot be allowed to become a mechanism through which public money indirectly strengthens one ideological ecosystem.
One of the most striking aspects of the investigation is that two major healthcare projects account for the overwhelming majority of the reported funding.
The biggest beneficiary identified was the Swargadew Siu-Ka-Pha Hospital in Assam, a 300-bed multispeciality hospital. According to the investigation, ONGC provided about ₹430 crore towards the project. The hospital is co-managed and operated by ONGC and the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar VaidyakiyaPratishthan (BAVP), a charitable trust whose institutions have documented links with the RSS ecosystem.
Another major recipient was the Dr AabajiThatte Seva Aur Anusandhan Sanstha, which received around ₹140 crore for a national cancer institute, according to reports examining the CSR data.
Together, these two projects account for approximately 85% of the ₹668 crore identified in the investigation.
This is an important qualification. Critics of the funding story should not pretend that ₹668 crore was distributed evenly among dozens of RSS organisations. It wasn’t. A substantial portion went towards large healthcare infrastructure projects.
But that fact also sharpens rather than eliminates the question: why were these particular organisations selected for such exceptionally large public-sector CSR commitments? If the projects provide essential healthcare to citizens regardless of religion, caste or political affiliation, ONGC should be able to demonstrate that clearly. If they were selected through a competitive, transparent and needs-based process, the public deserves to know the criteria.
The investigation also identified smaller grants to educational and social-service organisations associated with the wider Sangh network. Among the reported recipients were organisations connected with Vidya Bharati, the RSS’s educational network, as well as Vivekananda Kendra and other institutions associated with individuals or organisations linked to the Sangh. For example, reports cited CSR allocations to schools and hostels, including Saraswati Shishu Vidya Mandir and other educational institutions.Again, there is nothing inherently improper about funding a school, hospital or charitable institution simply because someone associated with it has an ideological background. But the public-interest concern arises when a pattern emerges across multiple institutions.
CSR decisions should be judged by publicly verifiable standards: social need, geographical deprivation, measurable outcomes, institutional capacity, financial accountability and equal access. Ideological proximity should have no role whatsoever.
That is precisely why ONGC needs to explain its selection process. RSS says it doesn’t need government funding. The controversy becomes particularly politically sensitive because of the continuing debate over the RSS’s legal and financial structure.
RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat recently argued that the organisation does not need registration because organisations that seek government funding require registration, while the RSS functions as a ‘body of individuals’.
If RSS itself does not receive government money directly, but organisations within its wider ecosystem receive substantial amounts from a government-owned company, where does the line between direct and indirect public funding lie?
Legally, these are separate organisations. That distinction matters. But public accountability cannot stop at legal names alone. If an organisation is institutionally connected to a larger ideological network, those relationships deserve disclosure when that organisation receives significant public resources.
At the very least, citizens should be able to see the complete chain: who received the money, who controls the institution, who sits on its governing body, what the money was used for and what outcomes were achieved.
The strongest criticism of the ONGC funding pattern is therefore not that hospitals should not receive money, or that organisations associated with RSS should automatically be excluded from CSR programmes.If an organisation linked to RSS is eligible for CSR funding, the same standards must apply to organisations linked to every other ideological, religious or social network. There must be no political favouritism. There must be no preferential access. There must be no opaque decision-making.
And there must be no possibility that a public-sector corporation is indirectly financing an ideological network because of its proximity to political power. Karnataka Congress president B.K. Hariprasad has already demanded greater transparency and accountability over the reported funding, arguing that the issue goes beyond the RSS’s registration status and concerns how taxpayer-backed resources are being used. ONGC had not immediately issued a response to the allegations reported by PTI.
At the same time, criticism of the funding should remain evidence-based. A contrary analysis has pointed out that the ₹668 crore figure is heavily driven by two large healthcare projects and represents only around 14.7% of ONGC’s CSR spending during the relevant period.
ONGC’s CSR budget is not a private donation from an individual executive. It belongs to an institution owned by the Indian state. That means citizens have every right to ask why hundreds of crores were allocated to organisations identified as having links with one particular ideological ecosystem. The answer cannot simply be: the organisations are legally registered and the projects are charitable. The higher standard expected from a public-sector institution is transparency.
ONGC should publish a detailed account of the selection process, evaluation criteria, governing relationships, utilisation certificates and measurable outcomes for these projects. It should also disclose whether organisations with comparable social needs but different ideological or institutional affiliations received similar consideration.
Because the real issue is bigger than RSS. It is about whether public institutions can spend public money without public scrutiny. ₹668 crore may not represent the majority of ONGC’s CSR expenditure. But it is far too large a sum to dismiss as routine charity. If every rupee was allocated purely on the basis of public need, then transparency should have nothing to fear.
And if the process was as neutral as ONGC would have the public believe, the company should have no difficulty answering the most important question of all: Was this public money allocated because these projects were the best possible beneficiariesor because these organisations happened to sit inside a powerful ideological network?
Until that question is answered with documents rather than political claims, the ₹668-crore ONGCSangh funding story will remain a serious test of the meaning of public accountability in India’s public-sector institutions.