New Delhi: The new High-Powered Committee appointed by the Supreme Court to review a definition for the Aravalli hill range needs to be reconstituted, several environment and conservation groups, scientists and former Indian Forest Service officers have said.In separate letters to the Chief Justice of India on June 18 and 19, they gave several reasons for this request including the fact that the new Committee consists of current and former government officials, which would make an independent and impartial assessment impossible.Individuals and groups that have written to the Supreme Court about this include scientist Ravi Chopra, former Indian Forest Service officer Prakriti Srivastava and NGO Vanshakti.Members are linked to MinistryOn June 3, the Supreme Court had announced that it had constituted a High Powered Committee comprising five members to review a definition for the Aravalli hill range. The Director General of the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) would be the ex-officio Chairperson of the HPC, and the other members would be Subhash Ashutosh (former Director General, Forest Survey of India), Rajendra Kumar Sharma (former Director, Geological Survey of India), Brij Mohan Singh Rathore (former Joint Secretary of the union environment ministry) and Ashok K. Bhatnagar (former Professor and Head, Department of Botany, University of Delhi). The Court also directed that an officer not below the rank of Director in the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change should be nominated as the Member Secretary.The Court also designated two Special Invitees who would be “invited by the Chairperson whenever necessary”: professors Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Dean of the School of Environment and Sustainability at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, and Laxmikant Sharma of the Central University of Haryana.However, both the Chair of the new HPC (the head of the ICFRE) and its Member Secretary (a director in the union environment ministry) are positions that are institutionally subordinate to the Secretary of the union environment ministry and function under the administrative control of the Ministry, the letters sent by scientists and environmental groups to the CJI on June 18 and 19 noted. This is contrary to existing legal requirements.“It is a well-established principle that anybody constituted to review the findings of an earlier committee should possess at least an equivalent, if not higher, level of authority, independence and expertise,” the letters noted.The Ministry’s Secretary headed the previous Committee appointed by the Court to look into the same matter; this Committee had accepted a controversial definition for the Aravalli hill range, one that would open up a majority of the region to human activities including mining, environmentalists had argued. This had led to widespread protests across many parts of the Aravalli, prompting the Court to take up the issue suo motu in December and guarantee to set up another committee to look into this.Moreover, the Board of Governors of the ICFRE, the head of which is the chair of the new HPC, is chaired by the same Secretary, while the union environment minister serves as the President of the ICFRE.“Consequently, the present Chairperson functions within the administrative hierarchy of the very Ministry whose earlier report is required to be independently examined,” one of the letters addressed to the CJI on June 18 by Stalin D., director of NGO Vanshakti, said.No Aravalli expertiseAnother concern with the composition of the HPC is that it comprises three retired foresters, but none of them have experience in the core Aravalli states of Haryana and Rajasthan and the NCR, “which are at the epicentre of mining and real estate pressures”, argued Prakriti Srivastava – who retired as the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests in Kerala – in her letter to the Chief Justice also on June 18.“The Aravallis are a unique socio-political-economic biophysical and regulatory environment and it is necessary that the committee members should be persons with local field experience and expertise. Besides, all are ex-government officers probably owing [sic] allegiance to the system,” Srivastava’s letter read.No experts from relevant fieldsThe HPC does not contain any “independent domain experts” and this “would defeat the very purpose of an independent re-examination of the entire issue”, Srivastava said in her letter.The HPC also does not have a wildlife expert, or a Geographic Information System expert (to look into mapping and its methodology); members should include experts in fields including hydrology, microecology and geology, she added.Though the Supreme Court had ordered that all forests (as per the Godavaraman order) be identified, demarcated and mapped (as per orders in 2024 and 2025), this has still not been done, Srivastava’s letter said, adding that this “is a pre-requisite before any exercise for defining Aravallis”.Several demandsThe letters to the CJI made several demands to address these concerns regarding the constitution of the HPC.One was that an independent chairperson and member secretary be appointed to the HPC.Another was that the report of the HPC should be submitted directly to the Supreme Court without being routed through any ministry or department under the government of India.A third is that the HPC should be reconstituted in such a way that the new members have expertise on health issues, occupational issues including traditional livelihoods (agriculture and cattle rearing), ecology, wildlife, hydrology, and Geographic Information Systems so that the experts can examine the impacts caused by mining and related activities across the Aravalli region.The letters also urged the Court to extend the deadline for the submission of the HPC’s report as it will take time to “meaningfully engage” with mining-affected communities in Aravalli districts (as listed by the FSI 2025 report 2025). The deadline is currently set at August 31.Inquiry into suppressing reportThe letters sent to the CJI also urged him to undertake a “comprehensive inquiry” into the conduct of officials of the union environment ministry, following the Court’s Amicus Curiae observation in February that the Ministry had “entirely suppressed” findings of a 2025 report by the Forest Survey of India regarding the Aravallis.Scientist Ravi Chopra said that he is “also inclined to support” this demand, after his experience with chairing two committees appointed by the Supreme Court (one to investigate the role of hydropower projects in floods in 2013, and another to look into the impacts of the Char Dham road project in 2019).“In both cases it was my disappointing experience that serving and retired government officials and scientists from government-funded institutions on the committees never voted against the views of the government in power, despite orally expressing opinions to the contrary during discussions…Therefore, I have grave doubts about their [the members of the new HPC] ability to express written unbiased understanding/opinions on the contested issues,” Chopra wrote in his letter to the CJI.Others who have written to the CJI about this include Odisha environmentalist Prafulla Samantara (National Convenor of the Lok Shakti Abhiyan), Sagar Dhara (an environment and policy expert who has worked with the United Nations Environment Programme and has been part of many committees appointed by the Supreme Court), and C.P. Rajendran (a geologist based in Bengaluru).Environment groups that have written to the CJI highlighting this issue include Vanshakti, We Support Our Farmers, Vetal Tekdi Bachav Kruti Samiti, Save Pune Hills, and the United Conservation Movement.