Aravalli feedback drive ‘inadequate, hurried’: Activists

The 21-day window for public feedback on the Aravalli hill ranges closed on Tuesday, with activists and local communities terming the exercise “hurried” and “inadequate”, and demanding that the Supreme Court-appointed High Powered Committee (HPC) seek an extension beyond its August 31 deadline

The 21-day window for public feedback on the Aravalli hill ranges closed on Tuesday, with activists and local communities terming the exercise “hurried” and “inadequate”, and demanding that the Supreme Court-appointed High Powered Committee (HPC) seek an extension beyond its August 31 deadline.

The HPC had issued a public notice on July 21, inviting suggestions and objections via email and public hearings ahead of submitting its final report by August 31.

The HPC had issued a public notice on July 21, inviting suggestions and objections via email and public hearings ahead of submitting its final report by August 31. However, critics said the process covered only four cities -- Gurugram, Alwar, Ajmer and Udaipur -- leaving out a vast majority of the 64 Aravalli districts.

At a press conference at the Press Club in Delhi on Tuesday, activists under the banner Aravalli Virasat Jan Abhiyaan said the consultation failed to reach the most vulnerable, including villagers and those affected by mining. “The whole process seems hurried and lacks details. Most villagers in the rural belt cannot and do not have access to emails. We have had to assist so many of them in writing these emails,” said Neelam Ahluwalia, co-founder of the group.

She said ground visits conducted by the committee between August 6-10 largely skipped villages in favour of already protected areas. “In Delhi, they visited the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary. In Faridabad, Mangar Bani. In Gurugram initially, they visited the Aravalli Biodiversity Park. If these are consultations, then one needs to cover a wide variety of the 64 Aravalli districts and villages in particular,” Ahluwalia said.

She also pointed to procedural lapses, claiming that in Udaipur, the hearing time was changed from 3pm to 10am, making it difficult for villagers from Dungarpur, Banswada, Pratapgarh and Chittorgarh districts to attend. “Even village sarpanches did not know the timings or venue of the public meetings. It was mostly through our sangathan that rural people got to know these hearings were taking place. This is not proper consultation,” she said, adding that the committee should conduct a more thorough assessment. “Even for the Western Ghats, committees studied the entire range for over a year. Here, they only needed 21 days.”

HT reached out to the committee for a response, including on whether it would seek an extension, but did not receive any reply.

Kailash Meena, who is leading local community efforts to protect hills, forests and rivers in north Rajasthan, said the committee’s entourage was followed by locals in Sikar to request visits to affected sites. “We requested them to come and meet a person dying of silicosis and showed them a river killed by stone crushers set up on its bed. We also requested them to visit Kotputli, which is seriously impacted by mining, or the nearby Girjan river -- our only river left after Sota, Katli, Sahibi and Kasawati have dried up. However, they did not visit these areas,” Meena said.

Kailash Chand Yadhav, secretary of Jodhpura Sangharsh Samiti in Rajasthan, said villagers had waited for the committee to visit Jodhpura, where hundreds are impacted by mining dust. “Villagers kept waiting and they did not show up. People wanted to show the ground reality. Kids barely a few years old are beginning to develop respiratory issues,” Yadhav said, pointing to seven-year-old Kashvi, a resident of the village, who was present at the press conference.

In November last year, the Supreme Court adopted a uniform recommendation from the environment ministry to define an Aravalli hill as any landform rising at least 100 metres above the surrounding terrain, with hills within 500 metres of each other grouped as a “range” -- a definition experts said would omit nearly 90% of the Aravallis, leaving them vulnerable to mining and construction.

The court stayed its November 20 judgment on December 29, 2025, keeping the recommendations in abeyance. On May 25, it appointed a new five-member committee headed by Kanchan Devi, Director General of the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), to examine the issue afresh.