CHANDIGARH: The All India Kisan Sabha has urged a high-powered committee appointed by the Supreme Court examining the definition and demarcation of the Aravalli Hills and Ranges to recommend an immediate halt to illegal mining and blasting in the Aravalli hills of Charkhi Dadri, Bhiwani and Mahendergarh districts of South Haryana, besides cancellation of leases of mining firms found violating prescribed norms.
Om Prakash, District Vice-President of the All India Kisan Sabha from Bhiwani, who met the Aravalli Committee during the Ramalwas village public consultation in Charkhi Dadri district, highlighted the near annihilation of the two-billion-year-old Aravalli range in Charkhi Dadri and Bhiwani districts.
“Except for a single hill under the Aravalli Plantation Project, virtually every hill in Charkhi Dadri district and adjoining Bhiwani district has been given for licensed mining over the past decade. No technology in the world can regrow hills razed to the ground,” he said and emphasised that with the hills gone, their forests, cattle grazing areas, streams originating from the hills and groundwater aquifers under the hills had gone too.
“Leaseholders continue to illegally excavate far below the groundwater level, which has dried up and continues to dry up agricultural wells across South Haryana, triggering an acute water crisis. Illegal and unscientific blasting has damaged houses and caused local residents to lose their eyesight in crusher blast accidents.
Labourers employed in mines and stone-crushing units and people living close by are succumbing to silicosis and lung diseases without any medical support. The Committee must recommend the immediate cancellation of all leases violating statutory environmental norms and mandate a scientific public health survey across the mining belt in South Haryana,” he said.
Sanju, Sarpanch of Gram Panchayat Ramalwas in Charkhi Dadri district, said, “Unregulated quarrying in the Ramalwas hills till the year 2024 has completely wiped out our local biodiversity and pastoral grazing commons, making comprehensive ecological restoration an urgent necessity.
Licensed mining in the village had breached the groundwater level, which resulted in the nearby wells going dry,” he said and added that the villagers boycotted the assembly elections in 2024 to highlight their problems.
“Finally, the mining lease was terminated at the end of 2024. We demand that the government compensate the village for this enormous ecological damage, clear the long-pending village dues, and restore the hazardous mining craters created in our Aravalli landscape into functional rainwater recharge structures under a scientific eco-restoration plan,” said Sanju.
“On June 20, 2023, the Haryana Government Gazette notified 506.33 acres of land in Rajawas as ‘Protected Forest’ under the Indian Forest Act, 1927, as part of the compensatory afforestation for the Great Nicobar project.
Shockingly, on the very same day, 119.55 acres—nearly 24 per cent of this protected forest—was put up for e-auction for stone mining and crushing without the consent or knowledge of the Gram Panchayat. Groundwater levels in our village and block have already plunged to 1,500–2,000 feet, placing Satnali block, where our village is situated, in the ‘Critical’ category.
We urge the Supreme Court panel to recommend the cancellation of this illegal auction, follow the Central Empowered Committee’s recommendations against mining in dark zones and plantation areas, and declare this entire 15-kilometre contiguous Aravalli ecosystem, with more than 20 villages, which shelters rare wildlife like the rusty-spotted cat, leopard, striped hyena, porcupine, monitor lizard, etc., a legally protected Conservation Reserve,” said Satyanarayan, hailing from Rajawas village in Mahendergarh district.
Yogbir Sangwan, an environmental activist from Pandwan village in Charkhi Dadri, said, “In villages like Pichopa Kalan and Manakwas, mining entities are actively extracting far beyond their lease areas. Overloaded vehicles run openly with the protection of illicit WhatsApp informer networks, and when local enforcement officers try to intervene, armed mafia elements attack them.”
Neelam Ahluwalia, Co-Founder of Aravalli Virasat Jan Abhiyaan, said that the High-Powered Committee listened to the voices of the rural communities in South Haryana—a region which is on the brink of an ecological collapse.
“Over the last decade, Haryana’s mining revenue grew by a staggering 7,060 per cent, but this commercial surge came at the cost of wiping out most of the Aravalli landscape in the two districts of Charkhi Dadri and Bhiwani and turning South Haryana into an arid dust bowl. According to the 2021 Land Degradation Atlas, 8 per cent of Haryana’s land area—equivalent to 3,60,000 hectares of land—has already degraded. Experts link desertification to the large-scale destruction of vegetation caused by mining,” she said.
Ahluwalia said that Haryana already has India’s lowest forest cover, at a dismal 3.6 per cent, yet pristine native habitats like Rajawas, harbouring ancient Dhok and endangered Jaal trees, are auctioned away for mining and stone crushing. Even forests protected under the ‘Nicobar Swap’ are not treated as sacred ‘no-go’ areas for mining and stone crushing in Haryana.
“How is this responsible and sustainable? We urge the High-Powered Committee to recommend an absolute ban on mining in water-stressed dark zones like Mahendergarh and other districts, the cancellation of mining leases of those breaching the groundwater table and mining beyond their lease areas, a cumulative environmental, social and health assessment of the damage done to the Aravalli range over the last few decades by mining, stone crushing, cement plants and waste dumping, weekly drone surveillance in mining hotspots across the range and along interstate borders, and that the government mainstream alternative building materials so the extraction of virgin stones from the Aravallis can be stopped,” she said.
A delegation of the farmers’ body submitted its demands to the committee during its visit to Ramalwas village in Bhiwani district, highlighting alleged large-scale destruction of hills, depletion and contamination of groundwater, damage to agricultural land and mounting health risks for workers and residents in mining areas.