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A group of environmentalists and social activists has claimed that the Supreme Court-appointed High-Powered Committee, tasked with travelling the landscape and defining the Aravalli, did not visit the mining-affected villages or conduct meaningful consultations with affected communities during its field survey, as reported by PTI.
Over the six days between 6 August and 11 August, the committee visited Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary, Mangar Bani, and the Aravali Biodiversity Park in Delhi-NCR before moving into Rajasthan, according to a statement by the Aravalli Virasat Jan Abhiyaan. The committee is due to submit its report by 31 August.
This claim comes amid persistent controversy over how the Aravallis should be defined and mapped, as well as the laws that are shaped around it.
Around the same time, another number has put India’s environmental record under scrutiny. The 2026 Environmental Performance Index (EPI), developed by researchers at Yale and Columbia, ranks India 176th out of 177 countries.
While this ranking is an obvious headline, the Aravalli exercise is a more useful place to ask what environmental performance looks like when it has to be translated into law.