Supreme Court Takes Suo Moto Cognisance, to Hear Aravalli Case on Monday

A special bench of the Supreme Court is set to hear a suo motu case on Monday regarding the controversial new definition of the Aravalli hills. The matter, titled “In Re: Definition of Aravalli Hills and Ranges and Ancillary Issues", will be heard by a three-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, alongside Justices JK Maheshwari and AG Masih.

The controversy stems from a November 20 judgment by a different bench of the apex court, which accepted a standardised definition proposed by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC). Under this framework, a landform is classified as an “Aravalli Hill" only if it rises 100 metres or more above the local relief. Furthermore, a “range" is defined only when two such hills are located within 500 metres of each other.

Environmentalists and former forest officials have raised an alarm, arguing that this height-based criterion is ecologically arbitrary. Data from the Forest Survey of India (FSI) suggests that out of over 12,000 hill formations in the region, only about 8.7% meet this 100-metre threshold. Critics contend that this definition effectively strips legal protection from more than 90% of the Aravalli landscape, particularly in Haryana and Delhi-NCR, where the hills are lower and more fragmented.