The document that decides how a CSR-1 filing goes is the registration instrument you already hold. For a Bengaluru charitable trust that is the registered trust deed. For a society it is the certificate issued under the Karnataka Societies Registration Act, 1960. For a section 8 company it is the certificate of incorporation from ROC Bengaluru. Form CSR-1 asks for the type, the number and the date, and it wants a PAN standing in the organisation's own name. When those two records disagree by one word, the filing stalls. Most of the work on a Bengaluru CSR-1 file happens before the form is opened.
Which decision has to be settled before Form CSR-1 goes in?
Form CSR-1 does not create a legal form. It records one. So the thing to settle first is what you are filing as, because in Karnataka the three answers sit with three different offices and produce three different certificates.
A trust begins life as a deed, presented for registration at the jurisdictional sub registrar. A society is registered under the Department of Cooperation, by the District Registrar of Cooperative Societies. A section 8 company is incorporated centrally and then placed on ROC Bengaluru's register. Whichever you hold, the number on that certificate is the number the form wants.
Three kinds of organisation bring us this filing in Bengaluru:
- A Malleshwaram society running an after school education programme, whose founder was asked last week for a registration number she does not yet have by a company's CSR committee.
- Founders of a cloud kitchen and restaurant brand, Indiranagar and Jayanagar outlets, who settled a separate charitable trust for their food donation work and now want it funded properly.
- A section 8 company incorporated through ROC Bengaluru, already talking to two corporate donors and holding nothing to show them.
Who qualifies is a national question rather than a Karnataka one, and we set it out in CSR-1 Registration in India explained. What is local is the paperwork sitting behind your answer.
What documents does a Bengaluru applicant have to assemble?
Nothing here is exotic. The trouble is almost always consistency between records created years apart, by different offices, in different scripts.
- The registration instrument: your registered trust deed, your society certificate under the 1960 Act, or your ROC Bengaluru certificate of incorporation.
- PAN in the organisation's own name, spelled exactly the way the registration instrument spells it.
- The objects clause of the deed, or the memorandum and rules of the society, so the activities you declare match the objects on record.
- Details of the authorised signatory, with a live Class 3 digital signature mapped to the correct PAN.
- A governing body or board resolution authorising that person to sign.
- The email address and mobile number that will take the portal one time password.
Two snags come up again and again in Bengaluru. Older societies around Malleshwaram and Chickpet often carry a name on the 1960 Act certificate that differs slightly from the name on PAN, usually a dropped initial or an expanded word. And a trust deed executed before 3 February 2024 carries the older stamp duty figure on its face, which unsettles donors who do not know the rate moved. Neither blocks the filing. Both are easier to explain before the form goes in than after.
How the CSR-1 filing runs, step by step
- We read your certificate and your PAN together and tell you on the first call whether the file is clean or needs a correction first.
- We collect the deed or the memorandum and rules, the signatory details and the resolution through a secure upload, against a written checklist.
- We confirm the digital signature is live, mapped to the signatory's own PAN and registered on the MCA portal, which is where most failed filings actually die.
- We prepare and file Form CSR-1 on the MCA portal, then send you the acknowledgement the same day.
- The MCA assigns your CSR registration number and we deliver the certificate with the fund raising guide.
What does CSR-1 registration cost in Bengaluru?
Our fee is ₹999 onwards and it covers the filing. What varies is whatever has to be put right upstream, and that depends entirely on which registration you hold.
| Cost line | What it covers | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| LegalX India CSR-1 filing | Document check, MCA filing, certificate, guide | ₹999 onwards |
| Class 3 digital signature | One authorised signatory, where none is live | Quoted before we file |
| Fresh charitable trust deed | Article 54 fixed duty, cash corpus and no property settled | ₹2,000 |
| Fresh society registration | Department of Cooperation published fee, higher inside BMRDA limits | Confirmed before filing |
| Section 8 company, state layer | Nothing payable in Karnataka | Nil |
The third row is worth reading twice. Under Article 54 of the Karnataka Stamp Act a Bengaluru trust settled with a cash corpus and no transfer of property pays a small fixed duty. Only a trust that puts land or a building into itself pays conveyance rates. That fixed figure has been ₹2,000 since 3 February 2024, and most pages you will find still quote the older one.
Which registrar and portal actually receive the filing?
Form CSR-1 is a central filing. It goes on the MCA portal, no office visit is involved, and there is no Bengaluru counter for it. Karnataka enters one step earlier, inside the certificate you quote in the form.
For a section 8 company that certificate comes from ROC Bengaluru, which the MCA also writes ROC Bangalore, and which is the single registrar for the whole of Karnataka. A society's certificate is issued under the Department of Cooperation, by the District Registrar of Cooperative Societies whose district holds your registered office. Its online front door is societyreg.karnataka.gov.in. A trust has no registering authority in the usual sense. The Department of Stamps and Registration registers documents and maintains no register of trusts. What you hold is therefore a registered deed and nothing beyond it.
That last point catches donors out. A corporate CSR team will sometimes ask a Bengaluru trust for a Charity Commissioner number. The Charity Commissioner machinery under the Bombay Public Trusts Act belongs to the districts Karnataka inherited from the old Bombay State in the north west of the state. It is not the route a Bengaluru trust takes. Karnataka legislated on that office in January 2026, and we track how it is brought into effect.
What does a Bengaluru NGO owe in the months after the number lands?
The CSR registration number is not the end of the file. Three obligations tend to arrive together.
A Karnataka society files with its Registrar, on or before the fourteenth day after its annual general meeting, the list of its governing body and an audited balance sheet and income and expenditure account. Its year ends on 31 December unless the Registrar has given previous sanction for another date, which catches founders who assume 31 March. A society or charitable trust falls inside the Karnataka Labour Welfare Fund once it carries on a trade or business with ten or more persons.
Income tax approvals sit alongside. The jurisdictional Commissioner of Income Tax (Exemptions) decides 12AB registration and 80G approval, and a Bengaluru applicant deals with an Exemptions charge that sits in the city itself. Both approvals run on a renewal cycle, and we track the dates. The NITI Aayog Darpan portal now carries NPO Darpan branding. After that rebuild an existing organisation signs in against its PAN, and we handle the migration too.
Why work with LegalX India in Bengaluru?
We file for trusts, societies and section 8 companies across Bengaluru, from Malleshwaram and Rajajinagar out to Whitefield and Koramangala, and our own office is in Kanak Nagar. The CA and CS team runs the whole file online, so nobody makes a trip anywhere. You get a certificate check before the form opens and the filing itself at ₹999 onwards in 7 to 10 days. You also get someone who can tell a corporate donor's compliance desk, in writing, exactly what your Bengaluru registration is.