Before 2025 yes was the 2010 no: Supreme Court had rejected 100-metre definition of Aravallis

This was not acceptable to the apex court which asked the FSI to carry an assessment based on satellite imagery in cooperation with the court’s Central Empowered Committee (CEC) and Rajasthan “of the entire hill range (Aravalli) in the  State of Rajasthan and it shall not be confined to peaks/parts of hills above 100 metres, from the ground level.”

The SC order further noted that Aravalli hills spanned over 50,000 sq kms in 15 districts of Rajasthan and that “wanton mining activities at a very large scale for many years have led to ecological imbalance and several parts of the Aravalli Hill range are destroyed.”

In October 2010, the CEC reported to the court that the FSI, “on analysing the spatial data of the terrain, has found that the terrain with slopes of 3 degree or more are associated with the hills and do not occur in flat terrain.”

The slope of 3 degree has been taken as the threshold for the purpose of delineation of the hills in areas at and above the elevation of 115 metre from the MSL, which is the minimum elevation of Aravalli Hill Districts in Rajasthan, the CEC said.

All such areas with slope of 3 degrees or more have been decided to be delineated as hills together with a uniform 100 metre wide buffer which has been added on the downhill side, the CEC said on the FSI methodology for demarcating Aravallis, adding that the flat areas, tabletops, depression and valleys falling within the above have also been included in the hills.

Using these benchmarks, the FSI identified 40,481 sq km in 15 districts of Rajasthan as Aravallis.

In April 2014, the CEC recommended that the SC directed Rajasthan “to immediately provide the digitsed GIS compatible mining lease boundaries and the forest area boundaries to the FSI for all the 15 districts having Aravali Hills” and “take effective remedial steps in a time bound manner to ensure” that no illegal mining happened.

In October 2018, the apex court acknowledged the grim picture flagged in a CEC report by noting that the ground verification carried out by the FSI revealed that 31 of 128 hills sampled in Rajasthan had disappeared completely.

“31 hills or hillocks have disappeared. If hills disappear in the country, what will happen? Have people become ‘Hanuman’ that they are running away with hills?” Justice Madan Lokur had asked the counsel appearing for Rajasthan.

When the Supreme Court revisited the matter in May 2024 to find a common definition of Aravallis for four states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi, both CEC and FSI were part of the committee formed for the purpose.

In fact, the FSI led the technical sub-committee (TSC) set up in June 2024 with the Geological Survey of India (GSI) and Survey of India (SOI) as members.

However, records show, the ministry lent heavily on the four states for arriving at a common definition and told the SC this October that the Aravalli states “have agreed to the criteria of elevation of 100 m and above from the local relief/ ground level, along with supporting slopes, presently followed by Rajasthan for regulating mining in the Aravalli Hills and Ranges.”

Despite a dissent note from the CEC and a detailed presentation by the amicus curiae, the SC on November 20 accepted the ministry’s recommendation for the 100-metre definition of the Aravalli, bringing over one-and-a-half-decade’s of judicial oversight to naught.