What India did to protect its forests and hills in 2025: from Kancha Gachibowli to Aravalli

From Kancha Gachibowli to Aravalli to Hasdeo, the year 2025 saw people coming in large numbers to protest against the threats of mining and deforestation. While the Supreme Court’s order on retrospective environmental clearances triggered debate on fundamentals of environmental jurisprudence, government’s policy on atomic mineral mining was also found to be in conflict with interest of ecologically fragile and highly vulnerable coastal lands.

The Supreme Court’s acceptance of the new uniform definition of the Aravali Hills and Ranges triggered a massive protest starting from December, in Rajasthan, Delhi, and Haryana.

According to the new definition, “Aravali Hill” will be defined as any landform in designated Aravali districts with an elevation of 100 metres or above its local relief and an “Aravali Range” will be a collection of two or more such hills within 500 metres of each other. The Bench accepted the recommendations for sustainable mining and the steps to be taken for preventing illegal mining in Aravali Hills and Ranges.

Protesters fear this new definition only protects hills higher than 100 metres from mining, and would leave the remaining hills — the 700 km range spanning from Haryana to Gujarat, with the bulk of it in Rajasthan —unprotected from threat of mining.

The Supreme Court on December 29, kept in abeyance its November 20 judgment upholding a government expert panel definition on Aravalli.

In March 2025, students of University of Hyderabad (UoH) started protesting against the auction of 400 acres of land of Kancha Gachibowli forest. Students stated that the land is part of the university, a claim which has been vehemently denied by the government.

Environmentalists said the land is home to a rich variety of native flora and fauna. They pointed out lack of required permissions for felling greenery, and the absence of an Environmental Impact Assessment which is mandatory for such projects.

In April, the Supreme Court stalled cleaning of the forest area and directed the Telangana Wildlife Warden to take immediate steps to protect the wildlife affected by the destruction of 100 acres of the Kancha Gachibowli “forest” area, telling the State government that it could not have “high-rises in the company of deer”.

In September 2025, veteran BJP leader and former Union Minister for Human Resource Development Murli Manohar Joshi and Congress veteran and Rajya Sabha member Karan Singh, along with several environmentalists and scientists appealed to the Supreme Court to review its 2021 judgment permitting widening of Himalayan roads, part of the Chardham project, beyond 5.5 metres.

Overseen by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, the project involves widening mountain roads, including those in the Bhagirathi Eco Sensitive Zone, and those leading up to India’s border with China.

However, environmentalists have argued that cutting hill slopes and the resulting debris are damaging to the eco-system and worsen the impact of landslides and torrential rains as well as cause massive roadblocks and pile-up on these mountain roads.

The Supreme Court, in a majority judgment on November 18, 2025, recalled its May 16 judgment which declared that the grant of ex post facto or retrospective Environmental Clearances by the Centre to building projects and constructions was a “gross illegality” and an “anathema”.

Justice Ujjal Bhuyan recorded a sharp dissent in his 97-page opinion. He termed the review judgment an “innocent expression of opinion” which overlooked the “very fundamentals of environmental jurisprudence”.

The May judgment had held that granting retrospective clearances in any form to regularise illegal constructions was clearly illegal.

In an editorial The Hindu states that post-facto clearances can only impose penalties, prescribe mitigation or order closure or demolition.

The Impact Assessment Division of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change announced in September 2025 through an office memorandum that public consultation is not required for the projects for mining of atomic minerals, notified in Part B, and critical and strategic minerals, notified in Part D, of the First Schedule of the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to withdraw the office memorandum, expressing his concern for Rare Earth Elements embedded in the ecologically-fragile and highly vulnerable beach sand systems in coastal Tamil Nadu.

In a written reply in Lok Sabha, Union Minister of State for Environment, Kirti Vardhan Singh, in December 2025, informed the State government that the exemption was issued under an already existing provision of the EIA Notification, Clause 7(III)(i)(f), which allows projects relating to national defence, security or other strategic considerations to be exempted from public consultation.

In August 2025, the Chhattisgarh government approved forest clearance for a mining project in ecologically sensitive Hasdeo Aranya. The project potentially paves the way for the felling of 4.5 lakh trees, drawing criticism from Opposition parties and environmentalists.

Demanding its cancellation, the Opposition have accused the ruling BJP of sacrificing the interests of the people of the State as well as ecological concerns “for the benefit of their capitalist friends”.

Local residents submitted as many as 1,623 individual objection letters during a public hearing for environmental clearance.

In 2022, the Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly unanimously passed a private member resolution urging the Centre to cancel allocation of all coal mining blocks in the ecologically sensitive area of Hasdeo Aranya.

Protest against mining in Hasdeo forest and the resultant deforestation dates back to 2011 when the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change granted clearance for the mining for a coal block. According to People’s Union for Civil Liberties, the Indian government has identified 23 coal blocks within the forest area.

While talking about forest conservation, the role of forest dwellers and adivasi communities are often ignored.

In October 2025, the Chhattisgarh High Court has dismissed a petition challenging the cancellation of community forest rights granted to villagers of Ghatbarra in the Hasdeo Aranya forest, where Adani Enterprises-owned entity is operating the Parsa East and Kete Basen coal mines.

In 2016, the District-Level Committee (DLC) in Surguja district cancelled community forest rights titles rights granted in 2013, noting that this was erroneously granted as the patch of land fell under mining areas, for which diversion of forest was already approved in 2012.

Forest Rights Act, 2006 recognises and vests rights to use forests to Scheduled Tribe and other forest-dwelling communities.

In August, The Hindu reported that thousands of forest rights titles distributed across at least three districts in Chhattisgarh seem to have disappeared from the records of the State government’s Tribal Welfare Department at various points over the preceding 17 months. As per the FRA, once titles are granted, they are neither transferable nor alienable but can only be inherited.

Villagers from three districts of central Arunachal Pradesh in May 2025, launched an indefinite sit-in against the 11,000-megawatt Siang Upper Multi-Purpose Project. Villagers stopped a pre-feasibility report and survey work for the hydroelectric project. The protesting women said the project will rob them of their ancestral land and livelihood. The villagers said they, under the banner of the Siang Indigenous Farmers Forum, have been opposing dams since the early 1980s.

A violence broke out as villagers protested against mining in Chhattisgarh’s Surguja in December 2025. The protesters, residents of Parsodi Kala village, were opposing the Amera extension coal project of the South Eastern Coalfields Limited, a subsidiary of Coal India Limited. The protesters alleged land grabbing.

Land for agriculture was their only source of livelihood and it was being taken away, which they opposed, some protesters said. Leelavati, a protester, said she would not give up her land. “We love our land and do not want to give it away. SECL will get coal, but what will happen to us?”

In October 2025, more than 70 scholars, former bureaucrats, activists, lawyers, and environmentalists wrote an open letter responding to Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav’s defence of the proposed ₹92,000-crore Great Nicobar Island mega-infrastructure project, urging the Minister to “set aside political considerations” and focus on the project’s “grave and irreversible negative implications”.

Great Nicobar project involves the construction of a trans-shipment port, an international airport, a township, and a power plant on more than 160 sq. km of land.

The signatories alleged that the Environmental Appraisal Committee ignored anthropological and ecological objections.

The Hindu reported that the Tribal Council of Little Nicobar and Great Nicobar has said in a complaint to the Minister of Tribal Affairs in August 2025, that forest clearance was granted for the project through a false representation to the Centre by Andaman and Nicobar Islands administration, claiming that rights of the tribal people under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, had been “identified and settled”.