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A High-Powered Committee (HPC) constituted by the Supreme Court on May 25, 2026, has brought little hope for conservation of the Aravallis. The constitution of the Committee is very worrisome, comprising mainly of ex-government officers.
The Supreme Court stayed its own order of November 20, 2025, which defined the Aravallis as 100 metres above local relief on December 29, 2025, after recognising the “profound concern” and “public dissent and criticism” against its November order. The Supreme Court ordered a fresh look at the definition for obtaining a fair, impartial, independent expert opinion after associating all requisite stakeholders.
This stand of the Supreme Court brought hope and renewed faith that concerns of the people had been recognised and the judiciary was taking a stance for course correction by prioritising conservation and needs of the communities living in the Aravallis.
However, the signs that things were not going in the right direction were visible in the December order itself. The court did not take into account that to actually protect the Aravallis, forests of all categories need to be identified and demarcated first, according to the 1996 Godavarman order and the Ashok Sharma orders in WP 1164/23. This has subsequently not even been included in the Terms of Reference of the HPC.
The next steps in March 2026 of the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) submitting names for constitution of the HPC and its endorsement by the Union Environment Ministry made it obvious that the court was once again in the stranglehold of the same agencies that had shaped the report of the Expert Committee on Aravalli (ECA) of October 2025. In the interests of fairness and transparency, the court should have distanced itself from the advice of the CEC and the ministry while taking a decision regarding constitution of the new HPC.
In its May 2026 order constituting the HPC, a five-member Committee has been set up, chaired by the Director General (DG) of the Indian Council of Forest Research and Education (ICFRE). Other members include Subhash Ashutosh, former Director General, Forest Survey of India (FSI); Rajendra Kumar Sharma, former Director, Geological Survey of India (GSI); Brij Mohan Singh Rathore, former Joint Secretary, Ministry of Environment; and Ashok K Bhatnagar, former Head, Department of Botany, Delhi University.
The Chair of the HPC is an officer serving under the Union Environment Minister and reports to the ministry Secretary, who was heading the ECA, based on which the Supreme Court arrived at its November 2025 conclusion that the Aravallis are landforms above 100 meters of local relief. This is a clear case of conflict of interest where the chair of the ECA may have a say in the new report, portraying the optics of a prospective vitiated report.
Further, the DG of the ICFRE is also heading the highly controversial Green Credit Program. The Program is already under litigation, and a contempt of court has been filed against the Secretary of the Union Environment Ministry in this regard.
The ex-Director, GSI on the Committee has expertise in base metal exploration and has spent a major part of their career in mineral exploration across India. Such a choice makes it apparent that mining is a priority.
The ex-DG FSI, another member of the HPC, did not get the Lafarge order of Supreme Court implemented during his FSI tenure, which directed geo-referenced mapping of India’s forests, including the migratory paths of wild animals. If this had been done, it would have gone a long way in protecting the Aravallis.
The other ex-forest officer has worked in Madhya Pradesh and has not dealt with communities in the Aravallis. The officer did work on desertification while at the ministry. However, there are many non-government experts possessing deep knowledge about concerns of communities in the Aravallis, who should instead have been taken on board.
These three retired government officers have been included though they have little experience in the core Aravalli states of Haryana and Rajasthan and the National Capital Region — which are at the epicentre of mining and real estate pressures. The Aravallis are a unique socio-political-economic biophysical and regulatory environment, and it is necessary that the committee members should be persons with local field experience and expertise. Besides, the ex-government officers on the HPC give the perception that they owe allegiance to the system.
There are no independent domain experts and no experts on wildlife. While Jagdish Krishnaswamy of the IIHS, Bengaluru, and Laxmikant Sharma from Central University of Haryana are special invitees who may be consulted by the committee whenever required, their views can easily be ignored or interpreted to support the findings of the HPC.
Previous expert committees such as the Gadgil Committee and the Pronab Sen Committee “for identifying parameters for designating Ecologically sensitive areas in India” were headed by non-government experts in stark contrast to the present seemingly compromised HPC for the Aravallis.
It appears that HPC has been set up to prioritise mining and give another iteration of the Expert Committee Report of the Union Environment ministry of October 2025.
Prakriti Srivastava is a former officer of the Indian Forest Service and Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Kerala)
Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth