‘Won’t allow anyone to touch Aravalli’, says SC, refuses to hear zoo safari issue

The counsel for Haryana, maintaining that they have revised the DPR of the safari project from 10,000 acres to over 3,300 acres, urged the bench to allow it to submit the revised DPR to the CEC.

But the bench was unrelenting.

“We will not permit anything today. We are absolutely firm. We will not allow anyone to touch this Aravalli range as of now, unless on a very scientific basis, a holistic report prepared by an impartial arbiter, a group of experts really come to our satisfaction for which we have already requested the Union of India,” said CJI Kant.

“They will suggest some names. The expert body will be constituted. We are definitely not the experts. So, we will like to be guided by some independent agency,” he added.

CJI Kant further said that once the expert committee’s opinion comes, it will deal with the safari project. “We will not allow grant any permission for even a single inch today unless in the main matter we are satisfied… absolutely as per the law,” he added.

He was referring was to the court’s December 29, 2025, order by which the SC had directed that its November 20, 2025 judgment accepting the 100-m height definition for the Aravalli hills as recommended by a government committee “be kept in abeyance” till a panel of domain experts undertakes a assessment of the committee’s report.

The committee had recommended that Aravalli hill be defined as any landform in designated Aravalli districts with an elevation of 100 m or more above its local relief, and an Aravalli range will be a collection of two or more such hills within 500 m of each other. Activists have warned that hills below 100 m from local relief could be opened for mining.

On Thursday, the Haryana counsel said the matter dealing with the definition of Aravalli hills and ranges have to do with mining while the safari project was totally different.

The CJI, however, said that’s “exactly” why “no project can be permitted unless we have the definition”.
He added, “We are not permitting anything and we do not want the platform of this court to be used for any kind of, I am sorry to use blunt language, sometimes some friendly matches also take place here. Therefore, we have to be extraordinarily cautious…”

On the counsel’s request that CEC be allowed to examine the safari DPR, the CJI added, “We will not permit anything. We will deal with it independently here. Whatever CEC wants to say… They are very selective in their opinion… We don’t want them to examine…”

When the counsel said “we are not proceeding any further” with the project but only requesting that the DPR be examined, Justice Bagchi said, “You are. An action to form DPR and seek its consideration by CEC is a step to establish the safari.”

CJI Kant said, “It’s not that we will not allow for all times to come. We are examining the entire issue comprehensively. Aravalli neither starts nor ends in Haryana. Aravali neither starts nor ends in Rajasthan. Aravali has a full range. holistic view and we have to take a holistic view depending on the entire aspects of the Aravali and the composite range.”

The SC was hearing a petition filed by five retired Indian Forest Service officers and NGO ‘People for Aravalis’, alleging the safari project would spell doom for the Aravalli range.

Hearing a plea filed by five retired Indian Forest Service officers, contending that the safari project will spell doom for the ecologically-fragile Aravallis, the SC had in October 2025, had asked the state not to proceed with the plan.

Touted to be the world’s biggest zoo safari, the project aimed at setting up big cat zones and house hundreds of species of birds, reptiles and butterflies in an area of 10,000 acres in the Aravalli ranges of Gurgaon and Nuh.