Q.Under Section 2(11) of the Companies Act, 2013, the term 'body corporate' excludes which of the following?

'Body corporate' is a wider term than 'company', but the Act deliberately carves out one type of organisation from it.

Section 2(11) of the Companies Act, 2013 defines 'body corporate' to include a company incorporated in India or outside India, but it expressly excludes a co-operative society, along with any other body the Central Government may notify as excluded. This matters because 'body corporate' is used in several places in the Act as the broader category, while 'company' (Section 2(20)) is narrower — a company incorporated under this Act or an earlier company law. A private company (option (a)), a public company (option (b)), and a foreign company (option (d)) are all, in fact, examples of a body corporate; a co-operative society, despite being a jointly-owned enterprise, is registered under separate co-operative societies legislation and is deliberately kept outside the Companies Act's definition of 'body corporate'.

Students often assume 'body corporate' and 'company' are interchangeable terms — remembering that 'body corporate' is the wider category (which specifically excludes a co-operative society) helps keep the two straight.