How India’s oldest Aravalli range being wiped off the map

Think back to your geography textbooks. The Aravallis were never just hills; they were old fold mountains – venerable elders that stood tall long before the Himalayas were even conceived. As one of the world’s most ancient mountain systems, they predate the Alps, the Andes, and the Himalayas alike. On the map of India, they are like a protective spine from the tip of Gujarat through the heart of Rajasthan and Haryana, terminating right at the President’s House on Raisina Hill in New Delhi. They remain our ‘Great Barrier,’ holding the Thar Desert at bay, and the vital ‘green lungs’ for all of Northern India.

But as of December 2025, that geography is being rewritten not by nature, but by a bureaucratic pen. A Supreme Court judgment, In Re: Issue Relating to Definition of Aravalli Hills and Ranges, has effectively redrawn the map of this ancient range by accepting the Union environment ministry’s new ‘uniform definition’, signing what experts are calling a ‘death certificate’ for over 90% of the Aravalli Range.

The geometry of exclusion

Under the new legal definition, a landform qualifies as an ‘Aravalli hill’ only if it rises at least 100 metres above the local relief. A cluster of such hills within 500 metres is classified as an ‘Aravalli range’. While ‘uniformity’ may sound like administrative clarity, the ecological arithmetic is devastating. Of the 12,081 hills mapped in Rajasthan, only 1,048 (about 8.7%), meet the new height criterion, and roughly 91.3% of the hills lost their legal identity as ‘Aravalli’s’ overnight. In Haryana, where the terrain is lower and more fragmented, the situation is even grimmer. Most ridges in Gurugram and Faridabad, whatever left of natural buffers that protect the NCR from dust and pollution, simply do not rise 100 metres above the surrounding land.

The concern is not merely definitional; it is about protection. For decades, the Aravalli’s were a no-go zone for large-scale commercial exploitation. By narrowing the definition to a handful of peaks, the state has effectively opened the slopes, scrub forests and connecting ridges to mining and real estate activity. Ecologically, a mountain range is not a cluster of isolated skyscrapers; it is a continuous system. The lower ridges, often just 20 to 50 metres high, play a critical role:

• Blocking desertification: These ‘small’ hills are the first line of defence against sandstorms from the Thar desert. Levelling these shorter hills opens dust corridors and can accelerate desertification across the Indo-Gangetic plains.
• Groundwater recharge: The weathered, fractured rocks of the lower Aravalli’s act like a giant sponge. In Haryana, where groundwater levels have fallen to nearly 1,500 feet in some areas, these zones are vital for aquifer recharge.
• Wildlife corridors: Wildlife does not remain confined to peaks. Animals move through valleys and scrublands. Fragmenting the range by height destroys connectivity between habitats such as Sariska and the Delhi Ridge.

The ‘sustainable mining’ paradox

The judgment appears to strike a balance, having imposed a moratorium on new mining leases until a Management Plan for Sustainable Mining (MPSM) is finalised. While this offers temporary relief, the entire narrative of sustainability collapses when the land itself is deliberately mis defined. If a 40-metre hill is no longer legally an ‘Aravalli’, it can be flattened under routine industrial permits, bypassing environmental safeguards now applied only to the so-called ‘true’ Aravalli’s.

The spectacle vs the sanctuary

Just this week, the world watched Lionel Messi’s highly publicised visit to Jamnagar. Carefully curated images followed: Messi feeding an elephant calf, playing football with one, even a lion cub named ‘Lionel.’ We fly in global icons for animal welfare photo opportunities at private, multi-million-dollar facilities, even as we systematically dismantle the natural habitats where those animals are meant to thrive in the first place. This is not new. We have seen it before. African cheetahs imported to Kuno, sprinting across grasslands, while the Prime Minister photographs them with a high-end camera against pristine enclosures. A grand narrative of ecological revival! Just one question: Will this ‘world-class’ wildlife centre rescue the animals displaced from the Aravalli as it goes down?

This is the central paradox of conservation in India today. We prefer spectacle over sanctuary, and conservation is treated like a luxury infrastructure project, air-conditioned hospitals, and high-tech enclosures, while the living landscapes that sustain wildlife are trampled. Wildlife does not survive in photo ops, it survives in intact forests, mountains, and corridors.

Will the Aravalli remain in geography books or slip into history books?

This is an erasure by bureaucratic language. By narrowing the definition, the state has rendered most of the Aravalli legally invisible. A complex geological and hydrological system has been reduced to a height chart, prioritising ease of business over ecological survival. The Aravalli Green Wall Project, which proposes a five-kilometre buffer zone, feels like a cosmetic bandage on a deep wound. We cannot build a ‘green wall’ while legally dismantling the natural stone wall that has stood for eons. Unless this judgment is revisited, grounded in geology and hydrology rather than a real estate altitude scale, the next generation will read about the Aravalli’s not in geography textbooks, but in history books. A range that survived two billion years of tectonic upheavals, volcanic eruptions and glacial ages may not survive a 100-metre rule.

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