Read the heading before you quote the number
A real figure, in a current PDF, that stops being law the moment you read the line above it.
A real figure, printed in a current government PDF, dated 31 December 2024, not withdrawn, sits one line below a heading that says it is not yet the rule. Everything below that heading reads exactly like every other cost-norm table in the document until you look one line up.
The table
MIDH’s Annexure VI prices the open-field horticulture category NHB funds, at ₹1,00,00,000 per project, and names Ladakh directly for the enhanced rate:
OPERATIONAL GUIDELINES MISSION FOR INTEGRATED DEVELOPMET OF HORTICULTURE (MIDH Operational Guidelines 2025)
Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India (published on nhb.gov.in)
Printed 31 December 2024
“Annexure VI (PDF p.76), page heading, verbatim: "National Horticulture Board: Proposed Changes in Components and Cost Norms." Under it, row "Scheme No. 01 Development of Commercial Horticulture through Production and Post Harvest Management (Integrated Projects)", item 1(i)…”Read the full clause
“Annexure VI (PDF p.76), page heading, verbatim: "National Horticulture Board: Proposed Changes in Components and Cost Norms." Under it, row "Scheme No. 01 Development of Commercial Horticulture through Production and Post Harvest Management (Integrated Projects)", item 1(i) "Commercial Horticulture Development in open field conditions in a project mode", Cost norms column, verbatim: "Rs. 100.00 lakh/per project for projects covering area over 2 ha., including add on components as per crop wise/component wise cost norms of MIDH on pro-rata basis." Pattern of assistance column, verbatim: "Credit linked back ended subsidy @ 40% of project cost in general area and @ 50% of project cost for NER and Himalayan States, Scheduled Areas and UTs of Andaman &Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep Islands, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh." WHAT BECAME OF THIS PROPOSAL, recorded because the answer is not what a reader would assume from the heading alone: NHB adopted it. Its own Operational Guidelines, effective 01.01.2025, carry the same item 1(i) at the same Rs. 100.00 lakh and the same enhanced-area list including Ladakh. The heading was still right when it was read, and the figures were still not claimable from THIS document; what made them claimable was a different instrument, issued afterwards, by the board itself.”
Annexure VI, PDF p.76
Read on 11 September 2026 by chirag.
The heading that changes everything
The line printed directly above that table, verbatim, is the whole answer:
“National Horticulture Board: Proposed Changes in Components and Cost Norms”
Proposed, not adopted. Nothing else on the page says so; only the heading does. On that basis this site declined to publish any figure from it, and went on publishing NHB’s own then-current guideline instead.
What happened to the proposal
It became the rule, in a different document. NHB issued Operational Guidelines effective 1 January 2025 carrying the same item at the same ₹1,00,00,000 and the same enhanced-rate list, Ladakh included. The heading was still telling the truth when it was read: the figures were not claimable from that document, and what made them claimable was a separate instrument issued afterwards by the board itself.
So the lesson is not that proposals are worthless. It is that a proposal and a rule are different objects, they can carry identical numbers, and only one of them can be quoted at a bank. The check costs one line of reading and it does not get easier with practice:
National Horticulture Board Operational Guidelines JANUARY 2025 (NHB Operational Guidelines, January 2025)
National Horticulture Board, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India (Plot No. 85, Sector-18, Institutional Area, Gurugram 122015)
Printed January 2025
“As per NHB norms for a minimum installed capacity above 50 MT and upto 300 MT in controlled conditions @ Rs. 75000/MT without canning and @ Rs. 85000/ MT with Canning including Production Unit + Compost making Unit.”Read the full clause and reasoning
“Chapter 02, Scheme No. 01, cost norms table, item 1 (vi) (PDF p.17, printed page 7). Item column, verbatim: "Integrated Mushroom Production Unit in project mode". Cost norms column, verbatim: "As per NHB norms for a minimum installed capacity above 50 MT and upto 300 MT in controlled conditions @ Rs. 75000/MT without canning and @ Rs. 85000/ MT with Canning including Production Unit + Compost making Unit." Pattern of assistance column, verbatim: "Credit linked subsidy @ 40% of eligible project cost in General area and @ 50% of eligible project cost for NER and Himalayan States, Scheduled Areas and UTs of Andaman &Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep Islands, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh." Those two percentages were cut to 35% and 45% by NHB's Public Circular of 21 August 2026, cited separately on every rate this record publishes. Read with Chapter 04, Important Instructions, item 16 (PDF p.51, printed page 40), verbatim: "In case of cold storage/CA storage, Mushroom, Ripening chamber, Reefer Van, Cold room and Pre-cooling unit, the EPC is worked out on the basis of capacity." Chapter 01 dates the whole instrument: "The Scheme guidelines shall be effective from 01.01.2025."”
PDF p.17 (Chapter 02, item 1(vi)); PDF p.51 (Chapter 04, instruction 16); PDF p.14 (Chapter 01, "Date of Coming into force")
Read on 14 September 2026 by chirag.
Where NHB did not simply copy the proposal
On the mushroom line, the two documents are not the same at all, and this is the single most consequential difference between them for anyone reading this site. Annexure VI’s cost-norm cell for an integrated mushroom unit is a pointer back to MIDH with no figure in it. NHB’s guideline replaces the pointer with numbers:
OPERATIONAL GUIDELINES MISSION FOR INTEGRATED DEVELOPMET OF HORTICULTURE (MIDH Annexure VI, the mushroom line: the proposal that left the per-tonne figure blank)
Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India (published on nhb.gov.in)
Printed 31 December 2024
“Annexure VI (PDF p.76), item 1 (vi) "Integrated Mushroom Production Unit in project mode". Cost norms column, in full, verbatim: "As per MIDH norms for a minimum installed capacity above 50 MT and upto 300 MT in controlled conditions". That is the entire cell: no rupee figure,…”Read the full clause
“Annexure VI (PDF p.76), item 1 (vi) "Integrated Mushroom Production Unit in project mode". Cost norms column, in full, verbatim: "As per MIDH norms for a minimum installed capacity above 50 MT and upto 300 MT in controlled conditions". That is the entire cell: no rupee figure, no per-tonne rate, and no mention of canning or of a compost unit. NHB's own Operational Guidelines effective 01.01.2025 carry the same item with the same capacity band and a different cost norm, verbatim: "As per NHB norms for a minimum installed capacity above 50 MT and upto 300 MT in controlled conditions @ Rs. 75000/MT without canning and @ Rs. 85000/ MT with Canning including Production Unit + Compost making Unit." The difference between the two cells is where every mushroom figure on this site comes from.”
Annexure VI, item 1(vi), PDF p.76
Read on 11 September 2026 by chirag.
Every per-tonne mushroom figure this site publishes for NHB comes out of that replacement. They exist in NHB’s own guideline and nowhere else, which is worth knowing if you ever try to check them against the MIDH document and cannot find them.
What this means for Ladakh, specifically
Ladakh is now the clearest case on this site of two central documents disagreeing in public, and the honest answer depends on which door you are standing at. NHB writes its enhanced-rate areas out by name, Ladakh is on the list, and that list is repeated in the circular that cut the rates. So a Ladakh grower draws NHB’s enhanced rate today, and this atlas prices NHB accordingly.
MIDH defines the same category by pointing at the HMNEH sub-scheme, whose own coverage statement was written while Ladakh was still part of undivided Jammu & Kashmir. It has never been updated. So under MIDH, Ladakh stays at the general rate here rather than being promoted on an assumption.
Ladakh: settled for NHB, still open for MIDH
NHB does not rely on the HMNEH list that leaves Ladakh unresolved: its own Operational Guidelines, effective 01.01.2025, write the enhanced-rate areas out in full and name this UT among them. Scheme No. 01, item 1(vi) (Integrated Mushroom Production Unit), Pattern of assistance column, verbatim: "Credit linked subsidy @ 40% of eligible project cost in General area and @ 50% of eligible project cost for NER and Himalayan States, Scheduled Areas and UTs of Andaman &Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep Islands, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh." NHB's Public Circular of 21 August 2026 cut both rates, to 35% and 45%, and its own footnote repeats the same list including Ladakh. So a Ladakh grower draws the enhanced rate from NHB. That says nothing about what MIDH pays in Ladakh, which stays unresolved for the reason set out separately on this page.
Ladakh was part of the erstwhile, undivided state of Jammu & Kashmir when the HMNEH portal's coverage statement was written (content frozen ~2017-18, predating the 31 August 2019 Jammu & Kashmir Reorganisation Act that split J&K into the separate Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, see NE_HIMALAYAN_NOTE). No primary government document found confirms whether HMNEH treats Ladakh (UT) as covered after that 2019 reorganisation; see .superpowers/sdd/2026-09-11-subsidy-atlas-phase-1/hmneh-enumeration-finding.md §4(a). Deliberately kept at general rather than promoted to neHimalayan by symmetry with Jammu & Kashmir: an understated entitlement is correctable by the applicant on evidence; an overstated one is not.
Why this matters
If you find a figure for a category you are applying under, check the heading printed above the clause before you rely on it, and check which document it sits in. A proposal in a government PDF reads exactly like law until you look one line up. Sometimes it later becomes law, in someone else’s document, with the numbers changed.