Supreme Court has banned all mining activity in Aravali hills area in Haryana. The court has said that the ecological degradation is so serious that it cannot permit even the smallest mining activity in the region.

Earlier in March, the court talked tough and showed its inclination for a total ban on mining in the Aravali hill areas of Haryana’s Faridabad and Gurgaon districts, being convinced that relentless battering of this natural barrier would allow the western desert to gradually eat up the grain bowl of the Gangetic plains.

The Special Forest Bench, comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices Arijit Pasayat and S H Kapadia, after continuously testing if the sustainable development framework could be applied in the area — in other words, allowing mining but under stringent conditions of eco-restoration — finally made its views clear: “If there is total devastation of Aravalis, then the logical corollary is a total ban on mining activity”.