The court directed the panel to submit its final report by November 30, 2026.
Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Monday (September 7, 2026) questioned whether it was “waiting for his retirement” While rejecting a six-month extension sought by a Supreme Court-appointed high-powered committee tasked with defining the Aravalli hills and range.
The court asked the committee to submit interim reports on specific issues requiring immediate consideration, without waiting for the entire exercise to be completed. It also directed the panel to hear all stakeholders, including tribal communities in Rajasthan and Gujarat, before finalising its recommendations. The Aravalli range forms a natural barrier between the arid desert regions in the northwest and the fertile northern plains. The definition, however, triggered widespread concern that large parts of the Aravalli landscape could fall outside its ambit, potentially opening them up to mining and threatening the region’s ecology. It also barred the grant of new mining leases and the renewal of existing ones. In May, the court constituted the high-powered committee with a broader mandate to undertake a scientific assessment of the Aravalli landscape, recommend a uniform definition, and examine the ecological consequences of mining and development in the region.
The Supreme Court has been regulating mining in the region since 2002. In 2018, a Forest Survey of India report drew attention to the scale of illegal mining, recording the disappearance of 31 hillocks across nearly 3,000 sites in Rajasthan and Haryana. In November 2025, the top court accepted a common definition of the Aravalli hills and range proposed by an eight-member committee headed by the Union Environment Secretary. Under the definition, a landform in an Aravalli district rising 100 metres or more above the local relief would qualify as an Aravalli hill, while two or more such hills located within 500 metres of each other would constitute the Aravalli range. On December 29, 2025, the Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance of these concerns and kept its November order in abeyance.
