NGO with substantial continuing State grants: §2(h). One-time or trivial grants: NO §2(h) coverage.

NGO receiving substantial government grant is a 'public authority' under §2(h); trivial / one-time grants do not trigger coverage.

Applying Thalappalam, an NGO that receives substantial and continuing State financing — measured against its total operating budget and the character of the funding — falls within §2(h). Trivial, one-time or project-specific grants do not bring an otherwise-private NGO into the definition.

NGO, §2(h), substantial financing, Thalappalam applied

These rulings have the closest editorial ratio to this case — computed by tf-idf cosine similarity over ratio, keywords and Act sections. Useful starting points if you are researching the same point of law.

• Charitable trusts receiving State grants — CIC (CIC 2017)
• Indian Olympic Association v. Harinder Dhingra (CIC 2013)
• D.A.V. College Trust and Management Society v. Director of Public Instructions (SC 2019)
• Thalappalam Service Coop Bank v. State of Kerala (SC 2013)
• Cooperative banks under RTI — Kerala HC (HC-KER 2017)

• All Supreme Court of India rulings in the corpus
• All RTI cases turning on §2
• Full case-law search
• Case-Law Database — overview
• PIO RTI Reply Guide
• The RTI Act, 2005 — annotated

Editorial summary · last reviewed 21 April 2026.