Gujarat plans to add 20,000 household biogas plants during 2026-27 under the central GOBARdhan scheme, on top of more than 14,000 units already operating across the state, according to Free Press Journal. Each household plant costs roughly Rs 30,000, with the state covering Rs 25,000 under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin) and the beneficiary contributing the remaining Rs 5,000.
How the rollout has progressed
Gujarat has built out GOBARdhan in phases rather than as a single statewide push. The first phase installed 7,423 individual plants across 38 clusters, run with backing from the National Dairy Development Board, Amul, Banas Dairy and Dudhsagar Dairy, dairy cooperatives that already have deep reach into rural households through milk collection networks. The second phase, funded entirely by the state government, targeted 10,000 plants across 50 clusters and has nearly reached that number. The newly announced 20,000-plant phase, reported by Prokerala, comes soon after the Union Cabinet approved a Rs 23,731 crore national biogas scheme, which gives states like Gujarat a bigger funding pool to draw on for their own cluster programmes.
What a biogas plant actually changes for a farming household
A typical two-cubic-metre household unit converts cattle dung and other organic waste into cooking gas and slurry that can replace chemical fertiliser. Citing a UNICEF survey, Free Press Journal reported that one such plant processes about 18,250 kg of livestock waste a year, saves the equivalent of eight to ten LPG cylinders, and cuts roughly 834 kg of carbon dioxide emissions annually. For a rural household, that translates into real savings on cooking fuel and, just as significantly, less smoke exposure for the women who do most of the cooking. The leftover slurry doubles as organic manure, feeding into the state’s separate push for natural and chemical-free farming.
Why Gujarat is leaning on dairy cooperatives
Routing the scheme through Amul, Banas Dairy and Dudhsagar Dairy is a deliberate design choice: these cooperatives already collect milk daily from millions of Gujarat’s dairy farmers, giving the government an existing, trusted channel to identify eligible households, verify cattle ownership and follow up on installation and maintenance, work that would otherwise require building a parallel rural outreach network from scratch.
What to watch next
Whether the 20,000-plant target for 2026-27 is met on schedule will depend on how quickly district-level clusters are identified and how smoothly beneficiaries can raise their Rs 5,000 share. The bigger test is longer-term: earlier GOBARdhan phases elsewhere in India have sometimes struggled with plants falling into disuse once installation subsidies are spent, so maintenance support in the coming years will matter as much as the installation numbers themselves.
Sources: Free Press Journal, Prokerala
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.