When the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change took the question of what constitutes an 'Aravalli hill' to the Supreme Court, the expectation was clarity that would strengthen protection for one of India's most fragile and strategically vital landscapes. What emerged instead was a technical, elevation-based yardstick, rooted in committee recommendations and an older forest-centric exercise, which risks turning judicial approval into a mechanism for narrowing, rather than safeguarding, the Aravalli ecosystem.

The Supreme Court's November order accepted a uniform operational definition, under which a landform must rise at least 100 metres above local relief to qualify as an Aravalli hill, with clustering rules to identify ranges. It also directed the preparation of a "Management Plan for Sustainable Mining" and barred new mining leases until that plan is finalised. The government has since argued that this brings long-needed clarity, prevents misuse of vague definitions, and does not weaken protection, repeatedly citing figures that over 90% of the Aravalli area remains protected and that mining eligibility extends to only 0.19% of the total footprint.

Those assurances sound neat, but they mask deeper flaws in both process and substance. The Aravallis are not merely a set of peaks that can be filtered through a height threshold. They are an ancient, eroded system of ridges, hillocks, pediments and shallow slopes stretching roughly 650 kilometres from Delhi through Haryana and Rajasthan into Gujarat. Their ecological value lies precisely in these low relief formations; they recharge groundwater across some of the........

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