The Supreme Court on Monday (December 29) stayed its previous judgment, where it had accepted the Centre’s definition on classifying the Aravalli hills as any landform at an elevation of 100 metres or more above the local relief. Its assent for the Central government’s classification had raised concerns about the potential proliferation of mining activities and their impact on the local ecology.
In recent days, environmental activists and local communities across Rajasthan and Haryana have protested the judgment delivered on November 20. It was the latest chapter in a decades-long series of interventions by the Supreme Court to protect the Aravallis — a range it has repeatedly described as a “green barrier” preventing the Thar Desert from advancing into the Indo-Gangetic plains.
Since the mid-1990s, the court has relied on two long-running public interest cases to regulate mining, construction, forest loss and urbanisation in the region.
The first, T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad v Union of India, was filed in 1995 to protect forest land in the Nilgiris but soon expanded to cover forest conservation across India. Through this case, the court defined “forest” not only by official records but also by ecological features and regulated non-forest activities, such as mining and construction.
The second, M.C. Mehta v Union of India, filed in 1985, initially focused on the Taj Trapezium Zone and Delhi pollution but later became the primary vehicle for protecting the Aravallis in Delhi and Haryana. It was in this matter that the court, in 2002, imposed sweeping mining restrictions in the Haryana Aravallis.
The court’s initial focus on the Aravallis came about in 1996. It prohibited mining and construction activities in a part of the Aravallis in Faridabad, Haryana, after reports by the Haryana Pollution Control Board and the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute highlighted ecological degradation in parts of the range.
In 2002, the court passed multiple orders restricting mining in the Aravallis in Haryana, based on evidence gathered by the court-appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC), which monitored it and found widespread illegal mining.
Across the mid-2000s, the court passed multiple orders prohibiting or regulating mining in the Aravalli hills and ordering the removal of illegal mining and encroachments, and requiring environmental impact assessments and monitoring mechanisms. The court clarified that mining could not continue without proper environmental clearance and regulatory oversight. These orders formed the backbone of subsequent enforcement against illegal mining.
By 2010, the court was reviewing mining in Rajasthan and encountered the state’s reliance on a 100-metre height rule to identify the Aravalli hills. On February 19, 2010, a three-judge bench of the court comprising Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan and Justices SH Kapadia and Aftab Alam rejected this approach and directed the Forest Survey of India (FSI) to conduct a scientific survey of the “entire hill range”, emphasising that the exercise “shall not be confined to peaks/parts of hills above 100 mts from the ground level”.
Following satellite-based analysis, the FSI, working with the CEC, reported in October 2010 that terrains with slopes of three degrees or more consistently corresponded to hilly landscapes in the Aravalli districts. The CEC explained that this 3-degree slope criterion, coupled with a uniform 100-metre buffer downslope, was a reliable way to delineate the Aravalli hills. Using this method, the FSI identified more than 40,000 sq km across 15 districts of Rajasthan as the Aravalli terrain.
The CEC recommended that Rajasthan provide digitised mining-lease boundaries and take measures to curb illegal mining.
The court continued to monitor compliance through the 2010s. It issued several directions on forest classification, removal of encroachments, state survey work and reiterated the requirement of environmental clearances for mining/leases in ecologically sensitive areas.
In 2018, the court again confronted disturbing evidence of mining damage in Rajasthan. During a hearing in the Godavarman case, the CEC reported that ground verification of 128 hill features by the FSI showed that 31 hills had “vanished” due to illegal mining.
On October 23, 2018, a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta expressed concern at the State’s inaction, observing that while Rajasthan earned royalties of around Rs 5,000 crore from mining, this revenue could not justify environmental harm.
The court ordered the Chief Secretary to stop illegal mining in a 115.34-hectare area within 48 hours.
The court also confronted unauthorised real estate in the Aravalli foothills. In Faridabad, Haryana, a high-end residential colony called Kant Enclave had come up on land notified as forest under the Punjab Land Preservation Act, 1900.
In a September 11, 2018, order in M.C. Mehta, the court directed demolition of structures built after August 18, 1992, holding that the damage to the Aravallis was “irreversible” and criticising the state machinery for permitting construction.
As the Aravallis enter Delhi, they thin into the Delhi Ridge, a rocky forested system known as the city’s “lungs”. Some parts of the ridge, however, were not legally notified, even though they shared similar geological features. The court referred to this as the “morphological ridge” – land that performs the ecological functions of the Ridge despite lacking formal notification.
On February 8, 2023, a bench of Justices B.R. Gavai – as he then was – and Vikram Nath prohibited the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) from allotting land in these areas. The court stressed the Ridge’s ecological importance.
In May 2024, the court issued contempt notices to the DDA Vice Chairperson for alleged illegal tree felling in a Ridge area to construct an approach road, and ordered status quo. On November 11, 2025, days before the mining judgment, a bench led by then Chief Justice Gavai directed the Centre to give statutory status to the Delhi Ridge Management Board (DRMB) under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.
The court noted that multiple authorities oversaw the ridge, which led to confusion, and said a statutory DRMB would serve as a “single-window authority” subject to National Green Tribunal oversight.
In October 2025, the court paused the Haryana government’s plan to develop a 10,000-acre “Aravalli Safari Park” in Gurugram and Nuh. The petitioners – retired Indian Forest Service Officers and an environmental rights collective – had argued the project would damage the fragile ecosystem, and the court’s interim order ensured that no construction would proceed without scrutiny.
The classification of the Aravallis resurfaced in January 2024, when the court, while considering mining-lease renewals in Rajasthan, asked the CEC to examine whether existing definitions used for regulating mining were adequate. A committee was formed with representatives from the four Aravalli States of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi, the FSI, the Geological Survey of India (GSI) and the Survey of India (SOI).
As reported in The Indian Express, the FSI led the technical sub-committee and, along with the GSI and SOI, provided scientific inputs. However, the Union Environment Ministry told the court in October 2025 that all four states had agreed on a 100-metre elevation criterion, similar to the rule that the Supreme Court had rejected in 2010. The CEC submitted a dissent note, but the Ministry recommended the height-based definition.
On November 20, 2025, the court accepted the 100-metre benchmark for identifying the Aravalli hills for the purpose of regulating mining. It directed the preparation of a “Management Plan for Sustainable Mining” in consultation with the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education and said that mining would remain prohibited in “core/inviolate areas” such as national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.
The court reasoned that a complete ban on mining could “lead to illegal mining activities being carried out, creation of land/mining mafias and criminalisation.”
The judgment has triggered widespread protests, with activists arguing that the 100-metre test excludes the lower hills and ridges that play an essential role in groundwater recharge and biodiversity.