Protecting the Aravalli Range: A Battle Against Market-Driven Exploitation
The fast depleting groundwater in Punjab and Haryana, along with the eroding topography, ecology, and environment in Rajasthan, Haryana, and Delhi NCR, are major concerns. These issues are not caused by nature and time but by human activity. The Aravalli Hills, formed billions of years ago from ancient tectonic plate collisions during the Precambrian/Proterozoic era, have been worn down by millions of years of weathering and erosion. Once a range of very high fold mountains, they are now a series of detached high and low hills, ridges, and rocky outcrops.
The hills in the Aravalli range stand between 300 and 900 meters, with the highest peak, Guru Shikhar on Mount Abu plateau in Rajasthan, reaching an elevation of 1,722 meters (5,650 feet) above sea level. Despite this, many hills are of lesser height. The Aravalli range has drawn significant attention from environmental experts, civil society, and the media, especially following a Supreme Court verdict in 2025 that accepted a 100-meter condition proposed by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC) committee. This decision led to widespread protests and criticism.
On the Supreme Court's direction in 2024, a technical committee was formed under the MOEFCC to create a uniform definition for the Aravalli hills, incorporating Rajasthan's existing definition based on local relief rather than sea-level relief. The committee suggested that a hill should be elevated to a height of 100 meters from the surrounding area or fall within 500 meters between two qualifying hills in the Aravalli range. The Supreme Court accepted this definition on November 20, 2025, but this decision was met with widespread opposition, leading to protests and criticism.
The government defended the definition, highlighting it as a 'technical' clarification and emphasizing its benefit of uniformly protecting the Aravalli range, a point of focus for criticism. On December 29, 2025, the Supreme Court stayed its order, citing public resentment. The technical committee, comprising MOEFCC officials, State Forest Department officials, and Forest Survey of India (FSI) experts, had suggested local-area-level rather than sea-level as the baseline for measuring the 100-meter height for a land rise to qualify as an Aravalli hill. However, the local area in the said region itself is more than 100 meters higher than sea level, a universal standard for measuring hill height.
According to the FSI, only 1048 (8.7%) of 12,081 Aravalli hills in Rajasthan would meet the standard of 100-meter height from the local relief. Sea-level relief is a universal, standardized reference point, whereas local relief is arbitrary, defined by the immediate surrounding terrain. For example, Mount Everest's height is measured from sea level, not local level. The committee's definition has created a uniformity that could permit mining and other activities in Haryana, where they were previously prohibited.
A key question is whether the definition serves to prevent mining and real estate activities or creates scope for them. The answer is the latter. The declared aim of the definition is to regulate mining, not to prevent it. The Aravalli range spreads through Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi, and Gujarat. In Delhi and Haryana, the Aravalli consists of more isolated lower hills and ridges, which are the main targets for real estate developers in Gurgaon and Faridabad districts of Haryana, adjacent to Delhi.
A survey conducted in 2023 identified 6,793 unauthorized structures, including luxury farmhouses, resorts, banquet halls, dwelling units, religious structures, and educational institutions, covering 786 acres of land in this region. According to a 2018 report by the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) appointed by the Supreme Court, 31 out of 128 Aravalli hills in the Alwar district of Rajasthan had vanished or critically eroded due to illegal mining and relaxed regulatory enforcement over the past 50 years.
Initially, there were isolated instances of mining and structures in the region, but recently, the resources have been exploited for the market. Market-driven activities like mining, deforestation, and real estate development have threatened the Aravalli Hills. What the government sees as a 'technical' clarification is actually a 'passage' for miners and real estate developers to exploit the region without checks. Once parts of the Aravalli are excluded from the definition, mining and real estate companies will be legally allowed to take over those areas, potentially leading to further exploitation of the entire range.
Market-driven forces, guided by profit maximization, do not account for human, cultural, environmental, and natural concerns. Corporations and industry groups often engage in extensive lobbying and campaign funding to influence legislation, potentially leading to policies that favor their profitability over broader human or environmental concerns. Governments must intervene to prioritize human welfare, environmental protection, and ecological balance rather than allowing market forces to dictate the fate of one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world.
The Supreme Court's ruling on December 29, 2025, to stay its own 40-day-old verdict until further notice is a welcome step. The court has respected public voices and taken a suo moto notice of the environmentalists' and civil society's concerns, ordering the formation of a new committee to examine the matter. The new committee must determine whether any definition is necessary if the aim is to protect the Aravalli range in its entirety. Protecting the Aravalli requires safeguarding the foothills and a 500-meter flatland around it, reserving it for agriculture and grazing only.
