The Supreme Court’s December 29, 2025, decision was welcomed as a major relief for those working to protect the Aravallis—India’s oldest mountain range. The Court stayed its November 20 order that defined the ancient mountain range as landforms rising above 100 metres, a definition critics warned would leave large ecologically sensitive areas vulnerable to mining and exploitation. The suo motu intervention followed widespread protests by experts and citizens, despite the Environment Ministry’s defence of a uniform definition. The next hearing on January 21 is expected to be crucial, with environmentalists nationwide closely watching the outcome.
One such environmentalist is Neelam Ahluwalia, founding member of People for Aravallis, a pan-India collective of citizens, ecologists, researchers and conservationists. The group highlights the ecological and social significance of the Aravallis through citizen reports and legal action in the National Green Tribunal and the Supreme Court. In direct response to the November 20 order, Ms Ahluwalia and others launched the Aravalli Virasat Jan Abhiyaan to protect the lifeline for millions in northwest India.
In an interview with The Statesman, Ms Ahluwalia talks about the journey and the challenges.
Q: What was your initial reaction to the November 20 order that narrowed the legal definition of the Aravallis?
A: Shock and heartbreak. The Supreme Court order reduced protection of the Aravalli range to landforms rising at least 100 metres above local relief, excluding low-lying scrub hills, grasslands, and ridges. This drastically shrank the legally protected areas, potentially exposing vast ecologically sensitive regions in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Haryana to mining. The Aravallis are crucial for controlling desert spread, recharging groundwater, mitigating pollution, and sustaining biodiversity and livelihoods. Rural communities across the range are dependent on the water resources of the Aravalli ecosystem for farming, forests and vegetation for cattle rearing. Ignoring these factors risks irreversible ecological and social damage.
Q: What is the next step in the ongoing struggle to save the range?
A: The Supreme Court’s next hearing on January 21 will reconsider the definition and protection of the Aravallis. For environmentalists and grassroots people living in the lap of the Aravalli range, this is a critical juncture: they aim to ensure that legal protections are strengthened rather than weakened, to prevent further ecological, livelihood and health damage across the Aravalli region.
Q: Aravallis have already suffered degradation. What additional threats were posed by the 100-metre definition?
A: My work over the last decade has shown that protecting the Aravallis must be approached as safeguarding a single, continuous mountain range rather than treating it as isolated hills across different states. The entire range is under severe threat. Across Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Haryana, hills are being destroyed by mining and real estate activities, causing irreversible ecological damage. As hills disappear, the streams and rivers that once originated from them have drastically reduced or dried up. Blasting and drilling puncture underground aquifers, and in many places, mining occurs below the water table.
Groundwater levels have plunged to depths of 1,500–2,000 feet in several villages across South Haryana, Rajasthan, and Gujarat, severely impacting drinking water, agriculture, and water security for lakhs of rural people, livestock, and wildlife living along the 692-km range.
Chemicals used in blasting penetrate deep into the earth, contaminating groundwater and causing waterborne diseases. Rural communities are also suffering from serious respiratory illnesses such as asthma, COPD, and silicosis. Agricultural productivity has declined across the Aravalli mining belt as crops are coated with dust from stone crushers. Ironically, these rural communities—who have traditionally worked to preserve the ecology—are the worst affected. Over recent decades, destruction has been so extensive that more than 12 major breaches have opened between Ajmer in southern Rajasthan, Jhunjhunu in northern Rajasthan, and Mahendergarh in southern Haryana. These gaps allow dust from the Thar Desert to enter Delhi-NCR, worsening air pollution.
The new definition will lead to more hills being razed to the ground on account of mining, which will in turn result in India’s oldest mountain range losing its continuity and more gaps and breaches being created from where the Thar desert will advance more rapidly towards Eastern Rajasthan, Western Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi-NCR. The Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas 2021 reports that 62 per cent of Rajasthan and 8 per cent of Haryana experienced desertification during 2018–19, primarily due to wind erosion and vegetation loss. Experts directly link this trend to large-scale Aravalli destruction. Mining aggravates the problem of vegetation loss, thereby increasing the risk of desertification, which in turn threatens the food security of North West India.
Haryana’s forest cover is only 3.6 per cent, much of it within low-elevation hills excluded under the new definition. Real estate and mining companies could use the definition to bypass environmental safeguards.
Q. Is it still possible to restore and protect the Aravalli ecosystem?
A: Absolutely, but urgent action is required. It is important to remember that hills once blasted and destroyed cannot be regrown. The Aravalli range has to be seen and protected as a natural ecosystem which is protecting the entire North West from becoming a desert and provides food and water security for millions. The highly fractured and weathered rocks with their natural cracks allow water to percolate and recharge the groundwater. Calculations reveal an immense potential of 2 million litres of groundwater recharge per hectare of the Aravalli landscape.
Mining disrupts aquifers, reduces groundwater levels, and contaminates surface water bodies. Rivers originating in the range are drying up or are getting severely polluted. For instance, the Kasawati river in Sikar district (Rajasthan) showed Ammonia levels of 6.4 mg/L—over ten times the permissible limit—due to ammonium nitrate explosives. Forest cover in the Aravallis enhances precipitation and helps prevent drought across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Delhi. Tree and canopy cover preserve atmospheric humidity, moderate wind velocity, and regulate rainfall.
The loss of green cover due to mining of smaller hills—no longer officially classified as Aravallis—can disrupt local rainfall and temperature patterns, increasing heat stress across the Northwest. The Aravalli forests act as vital green lungs for Delhi–NCR and the Northwest by absorbing carbon dioxide, releasing oxygen, trapping pollutants, regulating temperatures, and supporting climate mitigation. Cities such as Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida, and Ghaziabad already rank among the world’s 20 most polluted.
Mining-induced degradation would increase dust levels, worsen air quality, and intensify extreme weather events. The range supports rich biodiversity, including over 200 bird species, 100 butterfly species, and mammals like leopards and hyenas. Mining has destroyed habitats, reduced grazing land, harmed livelihoods, lowered agricultural productivity, and caused health issues from silica dust and contaminated water.