Opinion Aravallis are precious, need SC’s shield

Extending for nearly 700 km from eastern Gujarat to southern Haryana, through Rajasthan and Delhi, the Aravalli is the green lung for large parts of the country. It supports biodiversity, recharges aquifers, moderates the velocity of hot winds that blow towards north India and resists the advance of the Thar Desert towards the Indo-Gangetic plains. A recommendation by a Union Environment Ministry panel, accepted by the Supreme Court last week, however, seems to give short shrift to the range’s ecological services. It shrinks the area covered by the Aravalli by as much as 90 per cent in Rajasthan — the state with the largest portion of the mountain system. Asked by the apex court to define the Aravalli for mining purposes, the panel has ignored the yardsticks framed by the ministry’s own institution, the Forest Survey of India (FSI). It suggested that only landforms that are at an elevation of 100 metres or more should be considered as part of the mountain system. As an investigation by this paper shows, barely 1,048 of the 12,081 Aravalli hills, 20 metres or higher, mapped by the FSI fit the criteria. The Court has asked the environment ministry to come up with a plan for sustainable mining in the declassified area. However, several reports — including a survey by the SC’s Central Empowered Committee in 2018 — have underlined that the Aravalli has lost a fourth of its hills. Fears that the new definition would trigger more damage to India’s oldest mountain system are, therefore, not unfounded.

The environment ministry’s diminution of the Aravallis seems to go against its own plan for reviving the mountain system. For instance, the Aravalli Landscape Restoration Action Plan, framed in May, recognises the need to protect the range against the threats of “deforestation, mining, grazing, and human encroachment”. It points out that the eastward movement of desert sands has compromised the ecology of “regions like Gurugram and Alwar”. Since 2002, SC rulings have appreciated how all hills, plateaus, plains and ridges in the Aravalli together function as a single ecosystem. In 2018, for instance, a two-judge bench recognised that “in the absence of the hillocks, winds would bring pollution to the national capital”.

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The Court’s acceptance of the government’s height filter could reduce the Aravallis to a few scattered hills. The SC’s decision also doesn’t square up with its formidable record in furthering and fostering environmental reform. That’s why protecting the Aravallis, North India’s vital lung, will need the SC’s guiding hand.