Haphazard use of natural and environmental resources on the part of industrial sector has caused it to face a lot of criticism and strict government and non-government surveillance. To legitimize their existence, industrial houses, in the absence of comprehensive mandatory disclosure guidelines, have voluntarily started providing environmental information to the public mainly through their annual reports. But the level of environmental reporting i.e., structure of reporting, contents of report and the extent of environmental information provided varies substantially from company to company. In this article, analysis of samples of annual reports of the top 200 Indian companies has been done to examine the factors affecting the level of corporate voluntary environmental disclosure.

Awareness regarding the importance of environmental and natural resources in the existence of life on earth is increasing among the people day by day. This might either be due to the spread of education or the increase in health problems resulting from increased level of environmental pollution. Industrial sector being the major user and polluter of environmental resources, is under strict government and public vigil facing strong criticism for its anti-environmental activities. Big industrial houses, in the absence of mandatory environmental reporting practices, in order to legitimize their existence have voluntarily started reporting environmental information. Different modes, techniques, approaches, and criteria are being used by the companies to report environmental information. To ensure uniformity in reporting environmental information, guidelines have been issued, mainly at international level, by professional accounting bodies like Global Environment Reporting Initiative (GERI), Federation des European Economists (FEE), Accounting Advisory Forum (AAF), Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), etc. As far as India is concerned, no comprehensive guidelines or accounting standards have been issued regarding environmental issues, following few developments that have taken place in India, during the last few years.

Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) vide its letter number BPE-1 (19)/ADV/F/69 made it obligatory for the central public enterprises to disclose the expenditure incurred by them on social overheads in the annual reports (Chander, 1992, p.34). Similarly an amendment was made in the Companies Act in 1988, through which the disclosure of information relating to `energy conservation' was made mandatory in the annual reports. In 1991, Government of India announced that every company shall in the Report of its Board of Directors' disclose briefly the particulars of compliance with environmental laws, steps taken or proposed to be taken towards adoption of clean technologies for prevention of pollution, waste minimization, waste recycling and utilization, pollution control measures, investment on waste reduction, water and other resource conservation (Parmanik, 2002, p.77). The Companies Bill 1997 in Section 173 proposed that every company should disclose through its Board of Directors' Report the measures taken for the protection of environment.

Accounting World Magazine, Environmental Disclosure, Indian Companies, Environmental Resources, Natural Resources, Environmental Pollution, Anti-Environmental Activities, Environmental Reporting Practices, Global Environment Reporting Initiative, GERI, Federation des European Economists, FEE, Financial Accounting Standards Board, FASB, Accounting Advisory Forum, AAF, Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, Research Methodology, Null Hypothesis.