NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has commissioned a five-member high-powered committee to redefine the boundaries of the ‘Aravali hills and ranges,’ after discarding the contentious 100-meter height criterion previously accepted by the court.
A bench consisting of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M. Pancholi stated that the Director General of the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) will serve as the ex-officio chairperson. Other committee members will include former Director General of the Forest Survey of India (FSI) Subhash Ashutosh, ex-Director of the Geological Survey of India (GSI) Rajendra K. Sharma, former joint secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF) Brij Mohan Singh Rathore, and Ashok K. Bhatnagar, former head of botany at Delhi University. The committee is required to submit its report by August 31.
Environmentalists, including two petitioners in the case, have raised concerns about the objectivity of a panel led by a bureaucrat accountable to the government, questioning its potential to conduct a “fair, impartial, and independent” assessment.
Committee to Evaluate Impact of ‘Regulated Mining’ in Newly Defined Aravali Areas
The committee will primarily evaluate the ecological validity of both the 100-meter elevation and the 500-meter gap criteria established by the earlier panel’s report, which the Supreme Court upheld in its judgment on November 20 last year. The Chief Justice’s bench had paused the implementation of that definition.
The High-Powered Committee (HPC) will investigate the accuracy of claims that only 1,048 hills out of 12,081 in Rajasthan meet the 100-meter elevation benchmark, which could exclude the remaining lower ranges from environmental protection.
Importantly, the HPC will consider whether ‘sustainable’ or ‘regulated mining’ within the newly designated Aravali areas, despite regulatory supervision, could lead to detrimental ecological impacts. Additionally, it will identify territories that would lose protection under the new Aravali definition, mindful of the area’s ecosystem and biodiversity.
The bench stated, “The HPC is expected to conduct an objective assessment of the proposed measures and assist this court in determining whether their implementation could have ecological, environmental, or other consequences that may later prove difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.”
Such an assessment is crucial to ensure that any resultant decisions do not unintentionally lead to further degradation of the Aravali ecosystem and that appropriate measures are implemented to protect these ancient mountain ranges and the ecological systems they support, it emphasized.
The HPC will include J. Krishnaswamy, Dean of the School of Environment and Sustainability at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, and Laxmikant Sharma from the Central University of Haryana as special invitees. A director-level officer from the MoEF will serve as the committee’s member secretary.
The Supreme Court noted that the matter affects a broad array of stakeholders, including environmentalists, NGOs, mining leaseholders, and local villagers. The HPC may invite public representations. The Supreme Court will review the case on September 7.
