Discuss the challenges in arriving at a uniform legal definition of ecologically sensitive hill ranges like the Aravallis, with reference to federal and judicial coordination.

The Aravallis — among the world's oldest fold mountain systems and a natural barrier against the Thar's eastward spread — stretch across Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi, yet lack a settled legal identity. The Supreme Court-monitored search for a uniform definition, still unresolved before the High-Powered Committee's report, shows that the difficulty is as much institutional as it is scientific.

Scientific and definitional challenges

• The "100 metres above local relief" criterion, drawn from the Richard Murphy landform classification and adopted from a 2002 Rajasthan committee report, applies a single threshold to a range whose relief varies from Delhi's low Ridge outcrops to Rajasthan's high hills [1].
• A contour-based, uniform yardstick risks excluding low but ecologically vital foothills and groundwater recharge zones from protection [2].

Federal coordination challenges

• Land, mining leases and forests engage overlapping Union–State powers; Rajasthan alone has a formal mining-related Aravalli definition, so a common standard must reconcile four different regulatory regimes [1].
• The exercise was routed through MoEFCC with State Forest Secretaries, FSI, the Central Empowered Committee and GSI, and the Court had to separately direct that State views be incorporated — evidence of weak horizontal consensus [1].
• Definitions carry direct fiscal stakes: mining and real-estate revenues push States toward narrower boundaries [2].

Judicial coordination challenges

• The Court's continuing oversight, in the T.N. Godavarman mould, has substituted for legislative clarity; it even stayed its own November 2025 order on suo motu cognisance and ordered a fresh expert panel [2].
• Expert bodies dominated by retired officials, with forest demarcation excluded from the terms of reference and compressed timelines, invite criticism of inadequate field study and consultation with affected rural and adivasi communities [3].

A durable definition must therefore be legislated rather than litigated. Anchoring it in a cumulative environmental and social impact assessment, participatory verification under EIA principles, and an ecology-first reading of Article 48A would convert a contested cartographic exercise into credible cooperative federalism.