Green Protection To Aravalli

Green Protection To Aravalli:

The Supreme Court of India extended Green Protection to forest land in Aravalli ranges.

• The court’s ruling will mean around 30,000 hectares across the Aravallis and Shivaliks in Haryana will be considered forest land.
• The Supreme Court held that all land covered by the special orders issued under Section 4 of the Punjab Land Preservation Act (PLPA) in Haryana will be treated as forests and be entitled to protection under the 1980 Forest Conservation Act.
• Such land covered under Section 4 can see no commercial activity or non-forest use without the consent of the central government.
• It also stated that land covered by the special orders issued under Section 4 of PLPA have all the trappings of forest lands within the meaning of Section 2 of the Forest Act.
• The court directed the state government to clear any non-forest activity from such land in three months and report compliance.
• The bench considered a September 2018 judgment which held all land under PLPA could be treated as forest.
• The recent verdict clarified that the previous judgment failed to closely examine the scheme of Section 4 of PLPA and its legal effect in relation to Section 2 of the Forest Act.

Aravalli Range:

• They stretch for a distance of about 720 km from Himmatnagar in Gujarat to Delhi, spanning Haryana and Rajasthan.
• The Aravallis date back to millions of years when a pre-Indian subcontinent collided with the mainland Eurasian Plate.
• Carbon dating has shown that copper and other metals mined in the ranges date back to at least the 5th century BC.
• The Aravallis of Northwestern India, one of the oldest fold mountains of the world, now form residual mountains with an elevation of 300m to 900m.
• Guru Shikhar Peak on Mount Abu is the highest peak in the Aravalli Range (1,722 m).
• It has been formed primarily of folded crust, when two convergent plates move towards each other by the process called orogenic movement.
• The mountains are divided into two main ranges – the Sambhar Sirohi Range and the Sambhar Khetri Range in Rajasthan, where their extension is about 560 km.
• The hidden limb of the Aravallis that extends from Delhi to Haridwar creates a divide between the drainage of rivers of the Ganga and the Indus.