GridView must be placed inside a form tag with runat="server" even after the GridView is within a form tag

<form runat="server" id="f1">
    <div runat="server" id="d">
        grid view:
        <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="g">
        </asp:GridView>
    </div>

    <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="t" TextMode="MultiLine" Rows="20" Columns="50"></asp:TextBox>
</form>

Code behind:

public partial class ScriptTest : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        g.DataSource = new string[] { "a", "b", "c" };
        g.DataBind();

        TextWriter tw = new StringWriter();
        HtmlTextWriter h = new HtmlTextWriter(tw);    
        d.RenderControl(h);
        t.Text = tw.ToString();
    }
}

Even the GridView is within a from tag with runat="server", still I am getting this error.

Any clues please ?

You are calling GridView.RenderControl(htmlTextWriter), hence the page raises an exception that a Server-Control was rendered outside of a Form.

You could avoid this execption by overriding VerifyRenderingInServerForm

public override void VerifyRenderingInServerForm(Control control)
{
  /* Confirms that an HtmlForm control is rendered for the specified ASP.NET
     server control at run time. */
}

See here and here.

An alternative to overriding VerifyRenderingInServerForm is to remove the grid from the controls collection while you do the render, and then add it back when you are finished before the page loads. This is helpful if you want to have some generic helper method to get grid html because you don't have to remember to add the override.

Control parent = grid.Parent;
int GridIndex = 0;
if (parent != null)
{
    GridIndex = parent.Controls.IndexOf(grid);
    parent.Controls.Remove(grid);
}

grid.RenderControl(hw);

if (parent != null)
{
    parent.Controls.AddAt(GridIndex, grid);
}

Another alternative to avoid the override is to do this:

grid.RenderBeginTag(hw);
grid.HeaderRow.RenderControl(hw);
foreach (GridViewRow row in grid.Rows)
{
    row.RenderControl(hw);
}
grid.FooterRow.RenderControl(hw);
grid.RenderEndTag(hw);