Govt welcomes stay on Aravalli order it earlier sold as essential and scientific

The Union government has executed a near-perfect rhetorical somersault. Having mounted a strenuous defence of a controversial redefinition of the Aravalli Range, it is now enthusiastically welcoming the Supreme Court of India for putting that very order on ice.

On Monday, 29 December, Union environment minister Bhupender Yadav hailed the apex court’s decision to keep in abeyance its 20 November verdict accepting a “uniform definition” of the Aravalli hills and ranges, and its proposal to constitute yet another high-powered committee of experts.

“I welcome the Supreme Court directions… We stand committed to extending all assistance sought from MoEFCC in the protection and restoration of the Aravalli range,” Yadav posted on X, adding that “as things stand, a complete ban on mining stays”.

What the minister did not mention was that the stayed order was based on recommendations drafted by his own ministry, defended in court with unusual enthusiasm, and projected as the long-awaited scientific solution to what the government described as regulatory chaos.

The 20 November ruling did not happen by accident. Acting on submissions from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, the Supreme Court accepted a definition that treated only landforms rising at least 100 metres above local relief as 'Aravalli hills', and recognised an 'Aravalli range' only where two or more such hills lay within 500 metres of each other.

Government lawyers argued that without such a definition, “every mound and outcrop” was being labelled Aravalli, stalling development projects and creating legal uncertainty. The framework was sold as objective, measurable and environmentally sound.

Warnings from conservationists and geologists — that the Aravallis are among the world’s oldest and most eroded mountain systems, and cannot be assessed like younger, steeper ranges such as the Himalayas — were acknowledged, then effectively brushed aside.

The court accepted the ministry-backed definition despite those cautions, even though critics warned it would erase vast swathes of ecologically critical terrain from legal protection.

As criticism mounted, Yadav repeatedly sought to reassure Parliament and the public with a precise-sounding statistic: only 0.19 per cent of the Aravallis, he insisted, would be affected by mining. The figure was rolled out as proof that fears of environmental devastation were wildly overblown.

What went largely unsaid was that this comforting percentage depended entirely on the new definition itself. By sharply narrowing what legally qualifies as the Aravallis, the definition effectively shrank the mountain range on paper. Environmentalists pointed out that independent estimates suggested nearly 90 per cent of the landscape historically understood as Aravalli terrain could fall outside the definition — making it mathematically easy to claim that only a sliver was being opened up.

In other words, once most of the hills no longer count, it becomes simple to boast that hardly any are affected.

The Supreme Court’s November order did impose a ban on new mining leases and the renewal of old ones within the newly defined Aravalli areas until expert reports were finalised. Crucially, existing mining operations were not automatically halted, allowing current leases to continue.

That distinction soon became central to the controversy. Activists and environmental groups alleged that even the limited ban was treated as optional, with new mining leases quietly issued in Rajasthan after the court’s order, often without public disclosure. The episode fuelled accusations of “silent destruction” of the Aravallis while the legal debate played out in courtrooms and news cycles.

Faced with growing public and political protests and mounting unease, the Supreme Court has now stayed its own ruling and proposed a fresh expert committee to conduct an “exhaustive and holistic” review — an implicit acknowledgment that the earlier exercise, so confidently defended by the Centre, may have been neither exhaustive nor holistic enough.

Cue the government’s sudden change in tone.

The definition once described as indispensable is now best left in abeyance. The order once defended as balanced and scientific is quietly applauded into suspension. The same ministry that fought for clarity now welcomes reconsideration.

For the Aravallis, the stay offers temporary relief. For observers of environmental governance, it offers a familiar lesson: policy is defended vigorously until it becomes politically inconvenient, after which retreat is rebranded as responsibility.

The hills, meanwhile, remain what they have always been — ancient, fragile, and stubbornly resistant to being reduced to percentages on a ministerial spreadsheet.

With PTI inputs