Form CSR-1 turns on one document, and it is not the form. It is the registration certificate your organisation actually holds, with the trustee or director names printed on it. A Pune public trust files on the certificate issued by the Deputy or Assistant Charity Commissioner for its region. A society files on that plus its 1860 Act certificate. A Section 8 company files on the certificate of incorporation issued by ROC Pune. If the names on that paper no longer match the people running the organisation, the filing is premature.
Which entity form has to be settled before Form CSR-1 goes in?
CSR-1 does not create a structure. It declares one that already exists. So the first question is what your organisation is on paper today.
Three answers turn up here. A public charitable trust under the Maharashtra Public Trusts Act, 1950. A society under the Societies Registration Act, 1860. A company licensed under Section 8 and incorporated through the MCA portal.
The state wrinkle catches people out. In Maharashtra a charitable society is also a public trust, so a Pune NGO structured as a society carries dual registration, with the Registrar of Societies machinery and with the Charity Commissioner. A society that stopped at the 1860 Act certificate is incomplete here. Filing CSR-1 on half a registration is how a tidy looking application collects a query.
Which route in the CSR rules your entity sits in also decides whether a three year track record is asked of it. That turns on who established the organisation. We settle it on the first call, not after a rejection.
What does a Pune applicant have to put together?
- The registration certificate itself: the trust registration for your region, the society certificate, or the Section 8 certificate of incorporation from ROC Pune.
- The trust deed, memorandum or articles as they read today, with every amendment you have executed since the original document.
- PAN in the organisation's own name, along with the 12A and 80G registration particulars the form asks you to declare.
- A Class 3 digital signature for the trustee or director who will sign, and that person's DIN or PAN details.
- The trustee list exactly as the Register of Public Trusts carries it, not as your last general body meeting recorded it.
That last line is where these filings come apart. The Register held at the Public Trusts Registration Office, Pune is the version a scrutinising officer reads, and the version a funder's compliance team pulls a year later. A change in trustees is reported by a change report within ninety days of the change. Where two rounds of trustees came and went without one, the record needs repair before the form is worth filing.
What does CSR-1 registration cost in Pune?
Our fee is fixed. What moves is the repair work an old record needs before Form CSR-1 can be submitted at all, so that is quoted separately and only after we have read the file.
| Cost line | Why it comes up | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| CSR-1 filing package | Eligibility check, document review and Form CSR-1 filed on MCA | ₹999 |
| Digital signature certificate | The signing trustee or director must hold a valid Class 3 certificate | At actual, only where none is held |
| Records from the Public Trusts Registration Office, Pune | The trustee list on the form has to match the Register | At actual |
| Change report or record correction | Trustee or address changes never reported inside the ninety day window | Quoted after we read the file |
What does LegalX India check before Form CSR-1 is filed?
- We check the structure, the age and the funding route of the entity against the CSR rules, and say no on the call if the answer is no.
- We compare the trustee or director names on your certificate against the record the registering office actually holds today.
- Where the two disagree, the correction is sequenced first, because a fresh CSR number issued against stale names helps nobody.
- The signatory's digital signature is arranged or revalidated, and the form is drafted with the professional certification it carries.
- The form is filed on the MCA portal, and the CSR registration number comes back with the certificate for your funder file.
Which office receives the form, and where do your records sit afterwards?
Form CSR-1 goes nowhere local. It is filed on the MCA portal and processed centrally, and no office visit forms any part of it.
What stays here is everything the form points at. A public trust's registration and its change reports go to the Deputy or Assistant Charity Commissioner of the region within whose limits the trustee has an office for the administration of the trust. For this city that region is the Public Trusts Registration Office, Pune, one of ten Joint Charity Commissioner regions, with Ahilyanagar, Satara and Solapur sitting under it. A Section 8 company's incorporation record and its annual filings stay with ROC Pune.
So the number is central and the evidence behind it is not. When a donor's team verifies you eighteen months from now, what they read is the Pune record, not the MCA screen.
What does a newly registered Pune entity owe in its first months?
The CSR number is one line on a longer list. A trust or Section 8 company that has started receiving money also meets the Maharashtra stack.
- Profession tax enrolment: a Maharashtra company, LLP or GST registered person carries PTEC at ₹2,500 a year under its own Schedule I entry, due on or before 31 March.
- Profession tax registration: once anyone is on payroll, PTRC is the employer's own certificate for deducting and depositing employees' tax, and it is a different instrument entirely.
- The Shops and Establishments filing: registration is online to the Facilitator of the local area, and the Act's definition of establishment expressly catches a charitable trust.
- Change reports: trustee movements run on that ninety day clock, and a funder reading a stale Register treats it as a governance problem rather than a paperwork one.
None of this touches the CSR registration number. All of it touches whether a due diligence pack comes back clean.
Who is filing CSR-1 in Pune right now?
- A warehousing and logistics operator at Talegaon whose group trust runs a skills programme for warehouse staff, filing so that its own CSR budget and its customers' budgets can reach it lawfully.
- An NGO founder at Camp whose public trust has run for years on individual donations, now losing grants to peers who already hold a registration number.
- A Section 8 company set up by a Ranjangaon manufacturing group to run that group's own CSR work, where the track record question turns on who established the entity.
- A Hadapsar trust asked for its CSR registration number by its first corporate donor, three weeks before that donor's board approves the grant.
Why LegalX India in Pune
We are a CA and CS team, and our Pune office is at Yashwant Nagar, Near Bharatiya Samajseva, Yerwada, Pune 411006. The filing runs online from start to finish. Sit with us there only if you would rather do it that way. More than 15,000 clients have come through us, and on CSR-1 the work that earns its fee is rarely the form itself. It is the record repair that has to happen before it.
If you want the rules rather than the local view of them, read the national CSR-1 registration guide. If you want the number, send us the registration certificate and the current trustee list. We will tell you inside a day whether the file is ready to go. A callback within 30 minutes is the fastest way to begin.