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A vacation bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice JK Maheshwari and Justice AG Masih is scheduled to consider the matter on Monday, December 29.
The court’s intervention came after sustained protests by environmental groups and opposition parties in several states after the Supreme Court on November 20 accepted the recommendations of a central government committee that redefined what qualifies as the Aravalli hills.
Under the revised framework, only landforms rising 100 m or more from the local relief are classified as Aravalli hills, while the Aravalli range is defined as a group of two or more such hills located within 500 m of each other. Critics argue that the narrow definition undermines long-standing ecological safeguards for the fragile mountain system.
Senior legal experts had already warned that Revised definition may take away protection of vast area of AravaliSenior lawyer Dushyant Dave described the move as extremely disturbing and cautioned that it fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the mountain range and exposes large areas to commercial exploitation, including mining,
The committee that proposed the new definition was led by Union Environment Ministry And it included representatives from the Geological Survey of India and the Forest Survey of India as well as from Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi. Environmentalists argue that an earlier, broader definition presented by the Forest Survey of India in 2010 – and accepted by the Supreme Court at the time – better reflects the adjacent slopes, foothills and buffer zones of the Aravalli system.
Activists have warned that only a small part of the existing Aravalli landforms may be eligible for protection under the revised criteria, potentially leaving large parts of the range in the four states outside regulatory oversight, with implications for groundwater recharge, climate moderation and desertification.