NEW DELHI, INDIA: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) should not be made mandatory for companies, Sunil Mittal, chairman of India's telecom giant Bharti Airtel, said on Thursday.

"Voluntary compliance are always better than forced, companies who do not want to do it forcefully will find a way out of it...it should be proactively done by business community," said Mittal, delivering a lecture on corporate leadership here.

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The corporate affairs ministry has been prodding India Inc to embrace CSR in a much larger way.

Corporate Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid surprised the corporate world earlier this year, when he said his ministry would look at making CSR initiatives mandatory in case companies were reluctant do so.

There were reports that the government would consider bringing in clauses on CSR in the new Companies Bill.

"At the end of the day, we would all bow in front of the government's final position on the matter," said Mittal.