How does inadequate stakeholder consultation undermine the legitimacy of environmental fact-finding committees? Discuss with reference to the Aravalli High-Powered Committee.

Expert committees in environmental matters derive authority not only from technical competence but from the consent of communities who bear the ecological costs. The Supreme Court-appointed High-Powered Committee (HPC) on the Aravalli Hills and Ranges [2] illustrates how thin consultation can weaken an otherwise well-constituted body.

How weak consultation erodes legitimacy

• Procedural fairness deficit: participation is the core of environmental due process; a hearing that affected people cannot physically reach is consultation in form, not substance.
• Epistemic loss: villagers hold irreplaceable evidence on blasting damage, dust, and groundwater depletion — the very functions the Aravallis perform as recharge zones and a barrier against desertification [1].
• Risk of regulatory capture: when organised mining interests dominate hearings, findings appear skewed toward extraction rather than conservation.
• Compliance and durability: unowned reports invite fresh litigation, so the underlying dispute — here, the very definition of "Aravalli Hills and Ranges" [3] — remains unsettled.
• Equity: rural and Adivasi groups, least able to travel or file written submissions, are excluded first [5].

The Aravalli HPC experience

• The Court took suo motu cognisance of the definitional gap [3] and constituted a five-member HPC under the Director General, ICFRE, to independently review the Centre's report by 31 August [2].
• Consultation ran largely through a 21-day written/online input window [4], a channel poorly suited to low-connectivity mining belts.
• Field engagement was confined to hearings in four cities; activists allege no mining-affected village was visited, and that a hearing's timing was altered overnight, keeping participants away [5].

Legitimacy here is a solvable design problem, not an inherent flaw of judicial committees. Extending timelines, holding gram-sabha-level hearings, publishing responses to objections, and linking findings to restoration efforts such as the Aravalli Green Wall Project [6] would let expertise and participation reinforce each other — making conservation both scientifically sound and socially owned.