The Aravalli Hills, among the world’s oldest mountain ranges and a fragile ecological shield for north India, are at the centre of a raging controversy after a new legal definition by the Supreme Court. It fanned fears of large-scale mining, set off a political firestorm, and stoked a huge outcry online.

What the Centre calls a technical clarification, activists see as a slow-motion ecological unravelling. At the heart of the storm is a question that sounds deceptively simple: what exactly qualifies as the Aravalli Hills?

The controversy traces back to a weeks-old Supreme Court observation asking for a clearer, scientific definition of the Aravalli Hills and Aravalli Range. The top court noted that over the years, inconsistent descriptions had complicated environmental regulation, land-use planning, and enforcement against illegal mining.

The court cited globally accepted geological standards, including the definition attributed to geologist Richard Murphy, which considers a landform with a rise of 100 metres from the surrounding ground as a hill or mountain. In its quest for precision, the court accepted a criterion pushed by the Centre.