Aravalli Rule Update & Environmental Concern
Content
- Latest News
- New Aravalli Definition
- Existing Protections and Their Limits
- Inclusion Rules Under the New Benchmark
- Districts Dropped and Area Claims
- Scale of Exclusion Under the 100‑Metre Rule
- Government’s Arguments vs Critics’ Concerns
- Beyond Mining: Broader Environmental Risks
- ‘Over‑Inclusion’ vs ‘Exclusion’ in the Core Debate
Latest News
Amid criticism of the Centre’s new definition of the Aravalli Hills, the Environment Ministry maintains that no immediate ecological threat exists. It emphasizes that the range remains legally protected and allows mining in only about 0.19% of its total notified area.
The government has also paused granting new mining leases until completing a detailed study. Critics, however, argue that these assurances do not address concerns over contested court submissions and broader environmental risks beyond mining.
New Aravalli Definition
- The Supreme Court approved a fresh definition of the Aravalli Hills in November 2025. It recognises only landforms that rise 100 metres or more above the surrounding local relief, along with their slopes and adjoining areas, as part of the range.
- Critics argue that using the local profile instead of a fixed baseline risks excluding substantial stretches of the Aravallis from protection, especially in already elevated terrain.
- The Environment Ministry has stated that it will not issue new mining leases until completing the comprehensive study mandated by the court, even as scrutiny of the definition continues.
Existing Protections and Their Limits
- Many parts of the Aravalli landscape still enjoy strong statutory protection, including tiger reserves, national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, eco‑sensitive zones, notified wetlands, and compensatory afforestation plantations, which remain closed to mining or development unless explicitly allowed under wildlife or forest legislation.
- These protections apply regardless of whether areas fall within the revised Aravalli definition. However, experience shows that authorities can revise, dilute, or challenge such safeguards over time.
- The Centre and Rajasthan recently attempted to redraw boundaries around the Sariska tiger reserve, potentially opening adjacent areas to mining. The Supreme Court halted this move, illustrating how fragile regulatory protections remain without continuous judicial and public oversight.
- This episode underscores fears that, despite formal protections, reclassification efforts can create new vulnerabilities for ecologically sensitive zones.
Inclusion Rules Under the New Benchmark
- The new 100‑metre benchmark does not automatically exclude all landforms below that height, any feature that rises at least 100 metres above its immediate local profile can qualify as part of the Aravalli Hills.
- Moreover, if two such qualifying hills lie within 500 metres of each other, the land in between regardless of its own elevation will also be treated as belonging to the Aravalli range, extending the mapped footprint around connected hill chains.
- At the same time, the new parameters exclude extensive areas previously identified as Aravalli terrain under the Forest Survey of India’s 3‑degree slope formula, which counted land as Aravalli if it lay above the state’s minimum elevation (115 metres in Rajasthan) and had a slope of at least 3 degrees.
- Under this earlier method, the Aravallis spanned about 40,483 sq km across 15 districts of Rajasthan roughly 33% of the total area of those districts, making Rajasthan, which contains nearly two‑thirds of the range, the state facing the largest exclusions under the revised benchmark.
Districts Dropped and Area Claims
- Several districts that earlier appeared among 34 “Aravalli districts” across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Delhi are now missing from the updated list submitted to the Supreme Court.
- These districts include Sawai Madhopur, which hosts the Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve at the Aravalli–Vindhya interface; Chittorgarh, home to its UNESCO World Heritage fort on an Aravalli outcrop; and Nagaur, where the FSI mapped about 1,110 sq km as Aravalli terrain.
- Critics have also challenged the government’s claim that mining affects only 0.19% of the 1.44 lakh sq km Aravalli expanse, noting that this figure corresponds to the total landmass of the 34 designated districts rather than the hill range’s actual geographic spread.
- According to the FSI method, the Aravallis in Rajasthan alone cover 40,483 sq km across 15 districts about a third of each district’s area showing how definitional choices can dramatically alter the perceived extent of the range.
Scale of Exclusion Under the 100‑Metre Rule
Applying the new 100‑metre local relief definition to the FSI’s mapped hills in Rajasthan would exclude 99.12%—1,17,527 out of 1,18,575 Aravalli hills, including their slopes and surrounding areas, drastically shrinking the range’s officially recognised footprint.
Internal assessments cited by experts show that only a small fraction of mapped Aravalli landforms exceed the 100‑metre height threshold, raising concerns about the ecological consequences of such a narrowed definition.
Despite this, the Environment Ministry informed the Supreme Court that the 100‑metre benchmark would actually include a larger area as Aravalli than the FSI’s 3‑degree slope formula, a claim at odds with warnings from the FSI itself, which had flagged that vast tracts previously recorded as Aravalli would fall outside the new criteria. This discrepancy between official assurances and technical assessments lies at the heart of the present controversy.
Government’s Arguments vs Critics’ Concerns
In court, the Ministry argued that in 12 of the 34 Aravalli districts, the average slope is below 3 degrees, implying that these districts would be excluded if the FSI method were applied. Critics counter that this approach averages relatively flat plains with steep hilly pockets, thereby understating the true slopes of actual hill areas and weakening the comparison with the FSI’s more terrain‑sensitive mapping.
The government has also stated that elevation should be measured from the local profile rather than from a standardised baseline such as Rajasthan’s lowest elevation of 115 metres used by the FSI.
Using local profiles, however, can mean that even 100‑metre‑high hills are excluded if they sit on already elevated saddles, which could further shrink the officially recognised Aravalli footprint despite claims of expanded coverage.
Beyond Mining: Broader Environmental Risks
Officials have highlighted that only a tiny fraction of the Aravalli landscape will legally remain open to mining under the new regime, framing the 0.19% figure as evidence of robust protection.
Yet environmentalists warn that this focus on formal mining eligibility overlooks long‑standing issues of illegal mining, the potential future expansion of mining into areas dropped from the Aravalli category, and the cumulative ecological impacts of multiple small extraction sites on connected landscapes.
Equally significant is the risk from non‑mining activities: by de‑recognising large hilly tracts, especially in the Delhi‑NCR region where the Aravallis gradually taper in height, the new definition could enable expanded real estate, infrastructure, and urban development in ecologically sensitive areas. Such changes may intensify air pollution, degrade groundwater recharge zones, and weaken the Aravallis’ function as a barrier against desertification.
‘Over‑Inclusion’ vs ‘Exclusion’ in the Core Debate
The ministry‑led committee told the Supreme Court that not every hill is part of the Aravalli system and not every portion of the Aravalli landscape is strictly hilly, cautioning against “inclusion errors” that could result from relying solely on slope‑based criteria. It argued that the revised definition is meant to avoid wrongly categorising non‑Aravalli terrain as part of the range, presenting the 100‑metre rule as a way to refine boundaries.
Critics, however, stress that the committee’s submission gives much more weight to preventing over‑inclusion than to the risk of excluding authentic Aravalli landforms, thereby privileging reduction of mapped extent over ecological precaution. This perceived tilt towards exclusion has raised apprehensions that the new definitional framework may weaken environmental protection for one of India’s oldest and most fragile mountain systems rather than strengthening it.
