The Aravalli Question Faces the Brunt of India's Fondness for 'Strategic Exemptions'

Source: The Hindu 

Introduction 

In December 2025, Air Marshal and the Integrated Defence Staff Chief Avinash Dixir laid out the defence establishment's case for critical minerals. Modern defence systems, he said, rely on reliable access to these minerals and import dependence has become a strategic vulnerability because global supply chains are concentrated and exposed to export controls and geopolitics. He also linked self-sufficiency in defence manufacturing and operational readiness to secure mineral value chains and pointed to the National Critical Mineral Mission as the policy vehicle of choice. His words came as the defence establishment's contribution to the charged public debate over how the Aravalli Hills should be protected and whether their mineral wealth should be mined. 

What is the Aravalli Hills Issue? 

• Controversy over the Aravalli Hills flared up after November 20, 2025, when the Supreme Court adopted a uniform way to identify the "hills and ranges", froze new mining leases until the Environment Ministry had prepared a sustainability plan for the landscape, and said mining should be prohibited in core or "inviolate" areas, with an exception for "critical, strategic and atomic minerals" listed under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 1957. 
• In the new operational definition vis-à-vis regulating mining under the Environment Protection Act, "Aravalli Hills" is any landform in the Aravalli districts that rises 100 metres or more above local relief (measured from the lowest contour line encircling the landform). Likewise, the "Aravalli Range" is two or more such hills within 500 metres of each other, including the landforms in between. 
• Environmental groups and opposition parties have warned that this definition could still weaken enforcement in large parts of the landscape, since many undulating features stressed by illegal mining, urban expansion, denudation, and a dropping water table.  

What is the Issue with a 'Strategic Exemption'? 

• The Environment Ministry that must execute the sustainability mining plan (however it looks) has also weakened the legal environment protection framework to promote ease of doing business, creating uncertainty that the new exemptions won't slide into misuse. 
• Further, right now, India doesn't resolve clashes between its climate commitments and industrial demand through any clear rules; instead, it often resorts to executive discretion and opaque instruments like office memoranda, project-specific exemptions, and ad hoc appraisals that treat "national defence" or "strategic considerations" as sufficient reason to escape scrutiny. 
• The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) framework itself allows exemptions for public consultation on projects from that have "strategic and security implications" and all defence and strategic projects. Ministers also defended this step on Parliament citing national security grounds. 
• Next, the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act 2023 and subsequent administrative practices have introduced new exemption categories for land and infrastructure use that were not treated as "non-forest purpose." 

What have the Government and Courts Done? 

• The Ministry has repeatedly softened India's environmental clearance process to reduce friction for infrastructure and industrial investments since 2014. Two examples stand out.  
• First, in May, the Supreme Court had held that ex post facto clearances, i.e., allowing projects to begin construction without prior environmental clearance and permitting them later with penalties, breached fundamental environmental jurisprudence and undermined accountability.  
• But in November, the Court created that indeterminate regulatory space to regularise, this time with a new regulatory own uncertainty built into the regulatory space. This element of here (also called "strategic exemption") gives rise to opaque decision-making. 
• Second, in September, the Environment Ministry issued an office memorandum to accelerate mining projects while-side status to minerals by exempting them from public consultations under the EIA Notification 2006.  
• This move didn't require the legislative route to be amended because it already includes a special clause for "strategic considerations".  
• The amendments don't exempt mining outright but there's a scope creep that, together with the government's sympathetic attitude towards businesses and the post facto regularisation regime, merits scrutiny. 

How are the Aravalli Hills Threatened? 

• This is also why the public controversy over the Aravalli Hills is so heated. The Supreme Court order itself linked the Hills to groundwater recharge and to functions that prevent desertification, sustain biodiversity, and moderate local climate. It also acknowledged the complex threats to the landscape including mining, urbanisation, and groundwater depletion. 
• However, legitimate concerns about regulatory jurisdiction, absence of public consultation, tight implementation timelines, and selective platform application reveal potential gaps in the policy-making process. 
• The Supreme Court order itself linked the Hills to groundwater recharge and to functions that prevent desertification, sustain biodiversity, and moderate local climate. It also acknowledged the complex threats to the landscape including mining, urbanisation, and groundwater depletion. However, legitimate concerns about regulatory jurisdiction, absence of public consultation, tight implementation timelines, and selective platform application reveal potential gaps in the policy-making process. 

Conclusion 

The Aravalli question faces the brunt of India's fondness for 'strategic exemptions'. As India positions itself as a global climate leader while simultaneously pursuing rapid industrial growth, this case will test how the world's most populous democracy balances competing priorities. 

Success depends not just on mining critical minerals, but on establishing transparent frameworks that subject "strategic" claims to rigorous scrutiny rather than accepting them as self-evident justifications for environmental compromise. 

Without a transparent framework, climate action and economic growth will keep colliding while environmental law is left to absorb the political pressure, and the Aravallis—one of the world's oldest mountain ranges—will bear the consequences.