Bengaluru: Leaders and members of the Opposition in Aravalli-range states as well as activists have raised concerns regarding the lack of thorough consultations in these states by the Supreme Court-appointed High Powered Committee.The Committee has been tasked to review a definition for the Aravalli Range, among other things, and is scheduled to submit its report on August 31. But this is too little time and the committee should get an extension of its deadline, the political leaders and activists said.‘Met more mining representatives than aggrieved people’The Supreme Court had appointed a new High Powered Committee (HPC) on June 3 to obtain a “fair, impartial and independent” opinion and “resolve critical ambiguities” in the report on the definition of the Aravalli hills that another committee had submitted in November last year. The new HPC, however, called for online submissions from stakeholders. The move drew flak immediately because it excludes rural communities most directly impacted by decisions on the Aravallis – communities comprising people who are not literate and technology-savvy, activists had said.Apart from seeking online submissions till August 11, members of HPC have also engaged directly with stakeholders in the Aravalli Range states through visits and meetings. But members of opposition parties in these states have raised objections on the way the HPC has conducted these visits and consultations.In a letter to the HPC on August 25, Tika Ram Jully, Leader of Opposition in the Rajasthan Legislative Assembly, asked why the HPC visited only around seven districts when 36 of Rajasthan’s 41 districts come under the Aravalli hill range, and why they did not visit even one village that is affected by mining. He alleged that the main stakeholders heard in the HPC’s meetings from August 7 to 10 in Rajasthan were government officials and representatives from mining and stone crushing industries.“It was critical for the committee to go on ground to see how the licensed mining and stone crushing units are operating dangerously close to human habitation areas and flouting all norms without any accountability whatsoever,” he said.Jully urged that the committee recommend that an independent study be conducted on the social, health and environmental impacts of mining and stone crushing across the Aravallis and that no new mining leases or renewal of existing ones be permitted in the hill range.Also read: The Aravalli Hills Have A New Definition. Here’s Why This Is A Problem.Inderjit Singh, vice-president of the All India Kisan Sabha, said that the main occupation of people in the Aravallis is small-scale farming and cattle rearing but that grazing lands had been destroyed due to the dumping of mining waste and with hills being razed to the ground by mining.“Yet, the Aravalli committee did not visit any of the affected areas – whether in Gujarat, Rajasthan or Haryana,” he said in a statement.Hearings only in a few citiesPointing out that the committee had asked stakeholders to send representations on email and through google form, Rajkumar Roat, a Lok Sabha Member of Parliament from Banswara in South Rajasthan of the Bharat Adivasi Party said that the HPC’s online consultation process went against the Supreme Court’s order dated May 25 that “a fair, impartial, independent expert opinion must be obtained and considered, after associating all requisite stakeholders to resolve critical ambiguities and to provide definitive guidance on issues”.Roat also alleged that hearings were only held in four cities – Gurgaon, Alwar, Ajmer and Udaipur – with minimal or no presence of Adivasi communities who live in the Aravalli range. Roat is a member of the Bhil Adivasi community of the area. Information regarding the public hearings was not publicized widely in local newspapers or on the radio or in panchayat or other government offices. In Udaipur, the time of the public engagement was changed suddenly one night before from 3 pm in the afternoon to 10 am in the morning.As a result, tribal communities coming from far-away villages including the districts of Dungarpur and Banswada could not make it for the public hearing, he said. He added that in Udaipur though the Committee visited the Zawar mines, it did not visit nearby villages which are negatively impacted by the operations of the said mines.Congress MLA from Rohtak Bharat Bhushan Batra alleged that the Committee did not visit any Aravalli villages affected by illegal mining, waste dumping and burning in the districts of Gurgaon, Faridabad and Nuh, as well as areas like Bhiwani, Charkhi Dadri and Mahendergarh districts in South Haryana.CPI(M) MP, Amra Ram, said that the High Powered Committee should have visited villages like Jodhpura in Kotputli district, where around 45 people have died in the past four years due to pollution-caused health ailments, to understand how mining companies flout norms and even court orders.Also read: ‘Bad Optics’: Experts Express Concern Over Choice of Chairperson For SC-Appointed High-Powered Committee on Aravallis“The committee visited beautiful areas in Baleshwar Conservation Reserve but did not take out the time to visit the nearby Girjan River area to evaluate the threats from mining and stone crushing facing the only living river in this region,” Ram said, urging the committee to recommend that all mines and stone crushers operating in residential areas, next to agricultural fields and ecologically sensitive areas like rivers, orans and forests should be closed down.He also demanded that accountability be fixed on mining entities and the respective government authorities for silicosis and other diseases and disabilities that mine workers and local residents suffer from, in keeping with the polluter-pays principle.Extend deadline for reportAll members of parliament and legislative assemblies have urged the HPC to extend the deadline for the submission of their report, arguing that the current deadline – August 31 – is too short a time to have meaningful consultations with rural communities in all Aravalli districts in the states of Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.In his email to the HPC, Ravi Chopra, who has chaired two SC-appointed High Powered Committees on the impact of dams in the Upper Ganga basin and the impact of the Char Dham Project in Uttarakhand said that for both the Committees he chaired, extensive travel for several weeks throughout the affected regions was a common feature.“Given the detailed investigations done by the two committees, in both the cases we needed extension of our terms,” he wrote. As the chairperson, I requested the court for extra time, citing the work we had done. In both cases, the court graciously accepted the requests…I request all the committee members and the chairperson to discuss expanding the methodology you need to adopt to do full justice to the responsibility placed on you and request an extension for the purpose.”Stalin Dayanand, director of Mumbai-based NGO Vanashakti, said in a statement that conservation groups and concerned citizens are closely watching the work of the HPC, adding that the report not be rushed:“We earnestly request the committee to seek more time, broaden the consultation process, involve independent experts, listen to rural and adivasi communities and include knowledgeable local citizens in field visits rather than rushing to submit the report by 31 August. Protecting the Aravallis is a responsibility to future generations. The decisions taken today could determine whether future generations inherit a healthy and functioning ecological system or a severely damaged landscape.”