Judicial Retreat and Ecological Peril, The Aravalli Crisis and the Unraveling of India’s Environmental Jurisprudence

Judicial Retreat and Ecological Peril, The Aravalli Crisis and the Unraveling of India’s Environmental Jurisprudence

The Indian Supreme Court’s November 2025 judgment on the Aravalli Range stands not as an isolated legal ruling, but as a seismic event in India’s environmental history—a symbol of a profound and dangerous shift in the nation’s ecological conscience. As noted by retired IAS officer and environmental commentator Avay Shukla, the decision represents the culmination of a decade-long retreat by the higher judiciary from its once-storied role as the guardian of India’s natural heritage. This retreat, from a stance of precautionary principle to one of permissive pragmatism, coincides with India’s dismal ranking of 176 out of 180 on the Environmental Performance Index. The Aravalli judgment, delivered even as the National Capital Region choked under a lethal blanket of pollution, is more than a policy error; it is a philosophical abdication that threatens to render the Indo-Gangetic plain uninhabitable for generations to come. This current affair analysis delves into the judgment’s flaws, traces the judicial decay that made it possible, and underscores the irreplaceable role of the Aravallis in India’s climatic and ecological stability.

The Aravallis: More Than Hills, A Life-Support System

The Aravalli Range is one of the world’s oldest fold mountain systems, dating back over two billion years. Stretching approximately 670 km from Gujarat through Rajasthan and into Haryana and Delhi, it is not merely a scenic backdrop but a critical ecological infrastructure. Its function is hydrological and climatic: it acts as a giant, rocky sponge and a natural barrier. The lower formations—troughs, ravines, valleys, and foothills—are not wastelands but essential organs. They trap the monsoon rains, recharge aquifers that feed rivers and wells across northwestern India, and sustain a unique, fragile forest ecosystem. This green cover, in turn, anchors the soil, prevents desertification from the Thar, and captures the immense dust storms that sweep the region. To see the Aravallis solely as a collection of individual hills of varying heights, as the Supreme Court’s 100-meter formula implicitly does, is a catastrophic misreading of geography. It is akin to valuing a human body only for its bones while dismissing the vital organs as disposable tissue.

The range is already a wounded giant. Decades of legal and illegal mining, extracting an estimated 10 million tonnes annually, have left vast swathes denuded, pockmarked, and ecologically dead. The judgment, by seeking to “define” the Aravallis in restrictive vertical terms, risks legalizing the fragmentation and commercialization of what remains. As Shukla powerfully argues, the issue was never one of definition but of determination—a determination to protect the entire spatial expanse of the range as it has existed for millennia, recognizing that even a brutally mined area was once, and must be deemed to be again, a forest.

The Great Judicial Reversal: From Godavarman to Aravalli

To understand the gravity of the 2025 judgment, one must recall the pinnacle of India’s environmental jurisprudence. The 1990s and early 2000s, under Justices like J.S. Verma, B.N. Kirpal, and A.M. Ahmadi, were a golden era. The judiciary, invoking the fundamental right to life under Article 21, established the “Precautionary Principle” and the “Polluter Pays Principle” as non-negotiable tenets. The landmark 1996 T.N. Godavarman Thirumulpad case became the bedrock of forest conservation, giving wide interpretation to the term “forest” and placing the burden of proof on developers to show their actions were harmless. The courts acted on science, listened to expert committees and amici curiae, and stood as a bulwark against executive overreach and corporate avarice.

The current crisis, as Shukla meticulously documents, stems from the judiciary’s abandonment of this philosophy. This shift “first became noticeable” in the Ayodhya judgment, where historical and archaeological evidence was sidelined, setting a precedent for privileging other considerations over empirical data. This trend has since hardened into a pattern:

1. The Shimla Development Plan: Approved despite expert warnings it would destroy green belts and escalate seismic risk, only to be halted by the more specialized National Green Tribunal (NGT).

2. The Firecrackers Case: Allowing so-called “green crackers” that emit 70% of the pollutants of regular ones, a decision that ignores public health science.

3. The Char Dham Highway: Where “national security” was allowed to override established geological warnings about hill-slope instability, leading to devastating landslides.

4. The Vadhavan Port & Others: Where the “Polluter Pays” principle has been inverted into a “Pay and Pollute” license.

In this context, the Aravalli judgment is not an anomaly but the logical, most dangerous endpoint. The court chose to reinstate a 100-meter height-based definition for protection—a formula it had wisely rejected in 2010—while ignoring the unanimous recommendations of its own Amicus Curiae, an Empowered Committee, the Geological Survey of India (GSI), and the Forest Survey of India (FSI). These bodies advocated for a “slope criteria,” which would protect the ecologically vital lower contours. The court’s reasoning, as eminent jurist Harish Salve pointed out in a damning critique, is essentially absent. It sidetracked itself into a pointless “vertical argument” about hills, failing to see the mountain range as a single, interconnected, living ecosystem.

The Fallacy of “Sustainable Mining” in a Dying Ecosystem

A particularly insidious aspect of the judgment is its underlying logic, as interpreted by Shukla: that the fear of illegal mining justifies the expansion of legal mining. This is a false and dangerous dichotomy. Ecologically, the impact of a legally sanctioned mine and an illegal one is often identical—both involve deforestation, dust pollution, aquifer destruction, and habitat fragmentation. The argument serves only to legitimize the carving up of a protected landscape for commercial gain.

What the Aravallis need is not a Sustainable Mining Plan (SMP), but a Sustainable Conservation Plan (SCP). The priority must be preservation, restoration, and connectivity. The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) funds, running into thousands of crores, should be deployed not as an offset for continued destruction elsewhere, but for a massive, war-scale mission to revegetate the Aravallis’ mined-out areas. The goal should be to reconnect fragmented forest patches and restore the range’s hydrological function.

The Sting in the Tail: A Stay and A Glimmer of Hope

In a twist that offers a sliver of hope, the Supreme Court has, as Shukla notes, stayed its own controversial order. This provides a critical window for course correction. The path forward is clear and has been charted by experts:

1. Declare an Ecologically Sensitive Zone (ESZ): The entire aerial spread of the Aravallis must be mapped and declared an ESZ under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. This would make it a no-go area for any new mining, real estate, or large-scale industrial projects.

2. Apply the Godavarman “Deemed Forest” Doctrine: All areas within the historical extent of the range, including currently denuded lands, must be deemed as forest land for the purpose of protection, triggering the strict regulations of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980.

3. Listen to Science, Not Convenience: The Court must heed the GSI, FSI, and ecological reports that emphasize slope and contiguity over height. It must reinstate the precautionary principle, placing the burden of proof squarely on those who wish to exploit the region.

4. Prioritize Conservation over Exploitation: The state must shift from viewing the Aravallis as a storehouse of stone and real estate to recognizing it as a public trust, a vital life-support system whose economic value in terms of water security, climate regulation, and disaster prevention dwarfs any mining revenue.

Conclusion: A Legacy in the Balance

The Aravalli judgment of 2025 is a watershed moment. It reveals a judiciary that has lost its way, seduced by arguments of expediency and development that are fundamentally anti-scientific and short-sighted. The stakes could not be higher. The degradation of the Aravallis would accelerate the desertification of Rajasthan, permanently drain the water tables of the NCR and surrounding agrarian states, and unleash unimaginable levels of dust pollution into one of the world’s most polluted airsheds. The Indo-Gangetic plain, breadbasket to hundreds of millions, would face an existential threat.

The Supreme Court now has an opportunity to redeem itself. In staying the order, it has acknowledged the gravity of the concern. It must now go further. As Justice Robert H. Jackson said, and as Shukla reminds us, this is one of those rare times when the Court’s decision must strive to be both infallible in its wisdom and final in its authority. It must deliver a judgment that protects not just a mountain range, but the very right to a healthy life (Article 21) for present and future generations. The legacy of the court, and the livability of North India, hangs in the balance. The choice is between being remembered as the bench that presided over an ecological collapse, or the one that heeded the warnings and secured a lifeline for the future.

Q&A: Unpacking the Aravalli Judgment and Its Implications

Q1: What exactly is the “100-meter formula” reinstated by the Supreme Court, and why is it considered ecologically flawed?
A: The “100-meter formula” is a criterion that would grant protected “forest” status only to those parts of the Aravalli range that have a continuous canopy on hills with a height of 100 meters or more from the baseline. It is ecologically catastrophic because it reduces a complex, interconnected ecosystem to a simple vertical measurement. The most critical ecological functions—water recharge, soil conservation, dust trapping—are performed by the lower slopes, ravines, and foothills below 100 meters. These areas act as the watershed and the green buffer. By excluding them from protection, the formula legally opens them up for mining and construction, effectively dismembering the range and severing its ecological connectivity, rendering the entire system dysfunctional.

Q2: Avay Shukla and Harish Salve criticize the court for ignoring the “slope criteria.” What is this, and how is it better?
A: The “slope criteria” was recommended by the expert bodies (GSI, FSI, the Empowered Committee). It proposes defining the protected area based on topographical slope, rather than height. It would include all lands with a certain gradient that are part of the Aravalli formation. This is scientifically superior because it captures the actual geographical continuum of the range—the ridges, slopes, and valleys that function as a single hydrological and ecological unit. It protects the contours that channel rainfall and support vegetation, ensuring the entire mountain system is conserved as a cohesive entity, which is essential for it to perform its life-sustaining services.

Q3: The article mentions the “precautionary principle” being rooted in Article 21. Can you explain this legal connection and why its abandonment is significant?
A: Article 21 of the Indian Constitution guarantees the fundamental right to life and personal liberty. The Supreme Court, in its progressive era, expansively interpreted this to include the right to a wholesome environment, clean air, and water. The Precautionary Principle was judicially read into Article 21. It states that if an action or policy risks causing severe or irreversible harm to the public or environment, in the absence of full scientific consensus, the burden of proof falls on those advocating for the action to prove it is safe. This empowered courts to halt potentially damaging projects proactively. Its abandonment is significant because it flips this responsibility. Now, the environment and citizens must prove imminent disaster before a project is stopped, a much higher and often impossible bar to meet, giving a green light to risky ventures like the mining now threatening the Aravallis.

Q4: What is the “deemed forest” concept from the Godavarman case, and how could it save the Aravallis?
A: In the T.N. Godavarman case (1996), the Supreme Court ruled that the term “forest” must be understood not just according to dictionary or government records, but according to its “dictionary meaning.” It ordered that all areas that are recorded as forests in government records, regardless of ownership, and all areas that conform to the dictionary meaning of forest (i.e., have a certain density of trees and wildlife), must be protected under the Forest (Conservation) Act. Applying this to the Aravallis would mean that the entire historical expanse of the range—including parts that are currently degraded, denuded by mining, or not officially notified as forest—would be “deemed” as forest if they naturally belong to that ecosystem. This would bring the entire threatened region under a strict regulatory regime, halting further encroachment and mandating restoration.

Q5: The writer states that the court’s stay order provides hope. What specific actions should the Supreme Court take now to rectify the situation?
A: The stay order pauses the implementation of the damaging judgment. To rectify the situation, the Supreme Court should:

1. Permanently Set Aside the 100-Meter Formula: Formally reject the height-based definition as ecologically unsound.

2. Formally Adopt the Expert Recommendations: Direct the government to map and protect the Aravallis based on the slope and contiguity criteria proposed by the GSI, FSI, and its own committees.

3. Declare an ESZ and Apply “Deemed Forest”: Issue orders to declare the entire Aravalli spatial expanse an Ecologically Sensitive Zone and apply the Godavarman “deemed forest” doctrine to all degraded areas within it.

4. Mandate a Conservation Plan: Order the creation and funding of a comprehensive Sustainable Conservation Plan (SCP) using CAMPA funds, focusing on large-scale afforestation, groundwater recharge, and strict vigilance against illegal activity.

5. Reaffirm the Precautionary Principle: Use this case to strongly reiterate the application of the precautionary and polluter pays principles, restoring the judiciary’s role as a protector of environmental rights under Article 21.