New Delhi: No major country in the world—be it the US or those of the EU—employs a height criterion to identify ecologically-sensitive hills. Ecological functions, not elevation, are always the criteria.

In Para 10 of their judgement “In Re: Issue Relating to Definition of Aravali Hills and Ranges” (2025 INSC 1338), the three-member bench of learned judges comprising B R Gavai, K. Vinod Chandran, and N. V. Anjaria, state that India’s obligations to protect the Aravali hills and ranges “require that a uniform and streamlined approach be taken towards the preservation and restoration of the Aravali ecosystem including regulation of exploitation of the Aravali Hills in a scientific and sustainable manner, guided by the precautionary principle”.

The need for a “uniform and streamlined approach” has translated in the justices’ judgement into a simple criterion for what would be considered as Aravali Hills and Ranges; they have accepted the recommendations made by a committee of the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change that defined Aravali Hills as landforms in the Aravali districts (Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat) with an elevation of 100 metres or more, and ranges as two or more such hills within 500 metres of each other.

The judgement comes in the wake of decades-long litigation over illegal mining in the Aravalis, affecting their role as a barrier against desertification, water recharge zone, and biodiversity corridor. However, in accepting the committee’s simplistic definition of what constitutes an ecologically-vital hill and what doesn’t,........

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