The Supreme Court established the Kanchan Devi Committee to evaluate the government's contentious plan to define the Aravalli range as hills over 100 meters, focusing on the ecological importance of the Aravallis and constitutional environmentalism.
Why In News?
The Supreme Court constituted the High-Powered Kanchan Devi Committee to review a government report that proposes a 100-meter elevation threshold for Aravalli hills.
What is the Kanchan Devi Committee?
Judicial Mandate: The Supreme Court forms this committee to secure an impartial definition of the Aravalli hills and mandates a final report submission by August 31, 2026.
Composition: Kanchan Devi, Director General of the ICFRE, chairs the panel, which includes former directors of the Forest Survey of India (FSI), the Geological Survey of India (GSI), and prominent botany experts.
Criticism: Environmentalists and civil society groups highlight a potential conflict of interest due to the heavy representation of former bureaucrats and the absence of independent ecologists and hydrologists.
Scientific Scope: The committee evaluates the MoEFCC’s October 2025 report, which restricts the definition of the range to landforms with a 100-meter relative relief, and determines if hills separated by over 500 meters still constitute a contiguous ecological formation.
Why is Defining the Aravalli Range Important?
Ecological Barrier: The range acts as an indispensable wall, preventing the eastward expansion of the Thar Desert into the Indo-Gangetic Plains.
Mining Regulation: A strict legal definition enforces Supreme Court bans on the destructive mining of quartzite and sandstone.
Forest Conservation: Proper classification ensures that shallow hillocks and ridges remain protected under the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980.
Groundwater Recharge: The fractured rock systems serve as the primary recharge zone for water-stressed regions, particularly Delhi-NCR.
Environmental Concerns in the Aravallis
Illegal Mining: Unregulated quarrying flattens hills in Haryana and Rajasthan, violating the M.C. Mehta judgments.Urbanization Pressures: Aggressive real-estate development in Delhi-NCR swallows forest tracts and disrupts natural drainage.
Deforestation and Degradation: Indiscriminate tree felling reduces carbon sequestration, while mining pits and urban extraction deplete the water table and displace indigenous populations.
Supreme Court’s Legal Stance
Constitutional Obligation: The Court invokes Article 48A (State’s duty to protect the environment) and Article 21 (Right to a pollution-free environment) to justify its intervention.
Public Trust Doctrine: The Court reaffirms that the State acts as a trustee of natural resources and cannot facilitate private exploitation.
Rejecting Reductionism: The judiciary rejects the 100-meter metric, asserting that ecological function must supersede arbitrary geomorphological thresholds.
Way Forward
GIS-Based Mapping: Integrate Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and satellite imagery to map the contiguous ecological footprint of the entire Aravalli system.
Strengthened Enforcement: Deploy special environmental task forces to penalize mining mafias and ensure strict compliance with judicial orders.
Sustainable Planning: Establish inviolate green buffer zones to prohibit industrial and real-estate encroachment.
Inclusive Expertise: Expand the committee to include independent hydrogeologists and local conservationists to eliminate bureaucratic bias.
Ecological Restoration: Launch state-funded afforestation drives using indigenous species to rehabilitate abandoned mining pits.
Conclusion
To uphold constitutional environmentalism, the Kanchan Devi Committee must favor functional ecology over arbitrary height limits. Protecting the Aravalli range ensures the preservation of North-West India’s climate and water resources against permanent damage.
Source: NEWSONAIR
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PRACTICE QUESTION Q. Consider the following statements regarding the High-Powered Expert Committee (HPEC) chaired by Kanchan Devi:
Which of the statements given above is/are correct? A) 1 and 2 only B) 2 only C) 1 and 3 only D) 1, 2, and 3 Answer: A Explanation: Statement 1 is correct: The Supreme Court of India constituted the High-Powered Expert Committee (HPEC) headed by Kanchan Devi (Director General of the ICFRE) to independently review and delineate the Aravalli hill range. Statement 2 is correct: The committee was specifically tasked with reviewing critical ambiguities in the Centre’s criteria. This includes the controversial "100-metre elevation" rule (and 500-metre distance threshold) that environmentalists feared would exclude large sections of the Aravallis from legal protection and open them to mining. Statement 3 is incorrect: The committee has faced significant pushback from independent ecologists, scientists, and policy experts. Critics pointed out that the panel is primarily composed of serving and retired government/forest officials rather than independent environmental scientists and ecologists, raising concerns about its independence and potential bureaucratic conflicts of interest. |
The Supreme Court of India constituted the high-powered Kanchan Devi Committee, to provide a completely independent, scientific, and impartial review of the Central Government's highly contested report regarding the geographical boundaries of the Aravalli ecosystem.
The committee is mandated to resolve critical ambiguities surrounding the legal definition and delineation of the Aravalli hill range, examine if contentious elevation metrics are being used to deliberately exclude sensitive lands from protection, and submit its final regulatory recommendations by August 31, 2026.
The Aravallis are ecologically vital because they act as a mighty natural barrier checking the eastward expansion of the Thar Desert, function as the primary groundwater recharge zone for India's water-stressed National Capital Region (NCR), and serve as a crucial forest corridor and pollution sink for massive carbon emissions.
The range faces severe degradation from rampant illegal mining and stone quarrying, uncontrolled real-estate encroachment driven by rapid urbanization, extensive deforestation that shatters local wildlife habitats, and a highly fractured state-wise boundary definition framework that leaves lower hills exposed to commercial exploitation.
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