ahmedabad according to the union ministry of petroleum and natural gas indias leading public sector undertakings psus in the oil sector have contributed funds worth rs 180 crore for the construction of the sardar patel statue at kevadia in narmada district of gujarat these funds have been released by the psus from their corporate social responsibility csr corpusthe ministry said that the sardar vallabhbhai patel rashtriya ekta trust svpret had approached oil companies for contributions from csr funds for the construction of the statue of unity the contributions have been considered under schedulevii activity v viz protection of national heritage art and culture including the restoration of buildings and sites of historical importance and works of art etc said the ministry in a statementaccording to the ministry a contribution of rs 50 crore each was made by indian oil corporation ltd iocl and oil and natural gas corporation ltd ongc that apart rs 25 crore each was released from the csr funds of bharat petroleum corporation ltd bpcl oil india ltd oil gail and hindustan petroleum corporation ltd hpcl and rs 5 crore came from the csr corpus of engineers india ltd eilthe issue of utilizing csr funds of these psus was recently discussed in the rajya sabha pointing out the policy loophole due to which csr funds are not utilized to address development challenges bhomik shah ceo ngobox a csr research and partnerships platform said the real intent of mandatory csr is to bring in corporate expertise and fund in solving developmental challenges the country has been facing the schedule vii of the companies act only enumerates broad thematic areas for csr projects giving a lot of scope to companies for innovation and prioritization he went on to say when we look from the beneficiaries perspective spending on statue of unity may be a less important project but when we look at the magnitude of impact in future with tourism job creation and promotion of culture its rightly placed