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Amid mass protests, ecological concerns and fear of large-scale unregulated mining in the wake of the recently accepted definition of the Aravalli hills by the Supreme Court of India, the apex court has now taken a suo motu cognisance of the case.
The matter would be heard by a bench comprising of three judges, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, Justice J K Maheshwari and Justice A G Masih on December 29, according to the Live Law portal.
The new definition was accepted on November 20 after the Supreme Court in May 2024 asked for a uniform definition of the Aravallis across four states — Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi — in the context of mining.
The committee tasked with formulating the definition, admitted in its report that the Aravalli hills could not be identified based on slope and elevation method given its vast heterogeneity across the four states.
However, it went back and adopted a definition similar to what the state of Rajasthan had applied in the context of mining.
The new definition read: “Any landform located in the Aravalli districts, having an elevation of 100 metres or more from the local relief, shall be termed as Aravalli Hills. For this purpose, the local relief shall be determined with reference to the lowest contour line encircling the landform. The entire landform lying within the area enclosed by such lowest contour, whether actual or extended notionally, together with the Hill, its supporting slopes and associated landforms irrespective of their gradient, shall be deemed to constitute part of the Aravalli Hills.”
A Down To Earth analysis of the definition revealed that nearly 50 per cent of the Aravalli hills would be exposed if the accepted definition is applied, with most of the impacted area in Rajasthan.
Moreover, it opens a backdoor entry for mining of critical strategic and atomic minerals.
These atomic minerals are notified in the First Schedule of Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act (MMDR Act, 1957). This exception is recommended considering their strategic and defence significance and national security considerations and the fact that they are critical for overall economic growth and development, according to the central government committee’s report.
The report mentions the clause of ‘No new mining leases be granted’. This will pause mining temporarily, as these mining grants would be approved once the guidelines are laid out under the Management Plan for Sustainable Mining (MPSM) for the entire Aravallis.
