When the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change took the question of what constitutes an 'Aravalli hill' to the Supreme Court, the expectation was clarity that would strengthen protection for one of India's most fragile and strategically vital landscapes. What emerged instead was a technical, elevation-based yardstick, rooted in committee recommendations and an older forest-centric exercise, which risks turning judicial approval into a mechanism for narrowing, rather than safeguarding, the Aravalli ecosystem.
The Supreme Court's November order accepted a uniform operational definition, under which a landform must rise at least 100 metres above local relief to qualify as an Aravalli hill, with clustering rules to identify ranges. It also directed the preparation of a "Management Plan for Sustainable Mining" and barred new mining leases until that plan is finalised. The government has since argued that this brings long-needed clarity, prevents misuse of vague definitions, and does not weaken protection, repeatedly citing figures that over 90% of the Aravalli area remains protected and that mining eligibility extends to only 0.19% of the total footprint.
Who Knows The Aravallis? Not The Supreme Court
Those assurances sound neat, but they mask deeper flaws in both process and substance. The Aravallis are not merely a set of peaks that can be filtered through a height threshold. They are an ancient, eroded system of ridges, hillocks, pediments and shallow slopes stretching roughly 650 kilometres from Delhi through Haryana and Rajasthan into Gujarat. Their ecological value lies precisely in these low relief formations; they recharge groundwater across some of the most water-stressed districts in the country, stabilise soils, moderate microclimates, support biodiversity, and act as a critical barrier against desert expansion and dust movement from the west. Reducing this complex landscape to a single elevation test ignores how ecological systems actually function.
Before even assessing whether the 100 metre criterion is scientifically appropriate, a more basic constitutional question arises. Does the Supreme Court have the mandate to define hills and mountain systems? Indian courts have unquestionably played a vital role in environmental protection under Article 21, stepping in where executive action has been weak or absent. But courts are not scientific bodies, nor are they meant to settle geomorphological questions through judicial orders. In this case, the Court has accepted a technical definition supplied by the executive even as a comprehensive, Aravalli-specific ecological survey remains incomplete. That blurs the line between judicial oversight and scientific determination. If courts begin freezing technical definitions of landscapes - hills today, perhaps floodplains, wetlands, deserts or coastal systems tomorrow - judicial review risks sliding into environmental rule-making by fiat rather than precaution guided by evolving science.
Bring Science Back
The scientific basis itself is thin. The Forest Survey of India - Central Empowered Committee exercise of 2010, often cited in defence of the new definition, was forest-centric and advisory in nature. It was not designed as a multidisciplinary landscape-level assessment of groundwater recharge zones, wildlife corridors, ridge continuity or climate functions. Treating that exercise as definitive in 2025, after years of urban expansion, mining pressure and land-use change, violates the precautionary principle that underpins India's environmental jurisprudence.
This methodological weakness creates concrete loopholes. The 100-metre relative relief cut-off is blunt and exclusionary. Many ecologically critical ridges and low hills that support recharge and suppress dust fall below that threshold and risk being pushed outside formal protection. The mapping exercise mandated by the Court is still underway, yet the definition is already being operationalised, reversing the logical sequence of science first, regulation second. And headline figures about "90%" or "0.19% mining" are meaningless without publicly available, geo-referenced maps, a transparent registry of mining leases, disclosure of exemptions, and independent monitoring.
What The Aravallis Do For Us
The repercussions extend far beyond the Aravallis themselves. Northern India sits atop the Indo-Gangetic plain, the most polluted large region in the world. Winter inversions and bowl-like meteorology trap pollutants close to the surface, turning even marginal increases in dust and emissions into severe smog episodes. The fragmented ridges of the Aravallis function as natural dust suppressors and climatic buffers. Weakening their protection, even incrementally, imposes an added burden on an airshed that is already stretched beyond safe limits. Health studies consistently show massive life years lost to particulate pollution across the region; ecological margins here are thin, and mistakes compound quickly.
Water security is equally at stake. Groundwater recharge from the Aravalli system sustains agriculture, industry and urban centres across Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi. Damage to these recharge zones is not easily reversible. By the time judicial reviews conclude or management plans are refined, aquifers can be irreversibly depleted.
None of this suggests that courts should withdraw from environmental oversight. But oversight must insist on better science, not substitute for it. The sensible path forward is clear. Operationalisation of the new definition should pause until a high-resolution, multidisciplinary Aravalli survey is completed and publicly released. New and renewed mining leases should remain frozen until that data informs binding, landscape-level protection plans subject to public consultation. Independent monitoring, using satellite imagery and field verification with civil society participation, must become the norm. Most importantly, protection must be based on ecological function, recharge, connectivity and climate regulation, not on a single elevation metric.
The Aravallis are not lines on a contour map. They are lifelines for water, air and climate stability for tens of millions. In a region that has already paid dearly for environmental shortcuts, redefining protection before completing the science is a risk India cannot afford. If the government and the judiciary are serious about stewardship, they must let science lead, not follow.
(The author is an environmentalist spearheading public movements to focus and call for action on environmental justice issues)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
