The issue

This is not governance. This is environmental abandonment.

By declaring that hill tunnelling for road projects does not require Environmental Clearance, the State has quietly stripped India’s hills of protection.

This position betrays the civilisational ethos reflected in Vande Mataram. In the national song, the phrase “Malayaja Sheetalam” evokes the cooling influence of the hills—an early recognition of their role as natural climate regulators that sustain water, agriculture and human settlement.

Treating hills as expendable construction material risks long-term damage to water security, ecological stability and disaster resilience. What decades of environmental law, scientific understanding and judicial intervention sought to safeguard is now being undone through policy interpretation—without public debate, cumulative impact assessment or informed consent.

Hills that hold rivers, stabilise climate and shield communities from floods and landslides are being blasted and drilled as if they were inert rubble. This is not development. It is destruction sanctioned on paper.

Through a series of Right to Information (RTI) applications, NatConnect Foundation has uncovered that even large twin tunnels driven through ecologically sensitive hill ranges can proceed without Environmental Impact Assessment under the EIA Notification, 2006. While diversion of forest land may be approved, environmental appraisal of tunnelling activity itself is bypassed.

This interpretation directly undermines judicial safeguards laid down by the National Green Tribunal, which made Environmental Clearance mandatory for quarrying to protect fragile hill ecosystems. Tunnelling by blasting and drilling is often more destructive than quarrying, destabilising rock strata, rupturing aquifers and wiping out biodiversity.

Hills have thus been reduced to a regulatory blind spot.

If this approach continues, India risks turning the land of Sujalam, Suphalam, Malayaja Sheetalam into a scarred, unstable and water-stressed terrain.

 
The Crisis Ahead
The exemption opens the door to unchecked drilling, cutting and blasting across India’s hill systems—from the Himalayas and the Aravallis to the Sahyadris, the Eastern Ghats and numerous lesser hill ranges that quietly sustain regional water security.

It also creates a dangerous loophole: mining and quarrying can now be carried out under the cover of “tunnelling”, bypassing environmental scrutiny altogether. What courts sought to protect through mandatory clearance risks being nullified through executive convenience.

India has already paid a heavy price for ignoring geological and ecological limits—through tunnel collapses, landslides, sinking settlements and loss of life. Removing environmental checks from hill tunnelling is an invitation to repeat these disasters on a larger and irreversible scale.

Hills are not inert landforms. They are water towers, climate regulators, biodiversity reservoirs and natural buffers against floods and landslides. Once hills collapse, they cannot be rebuilt. Once aquifers are broken, they do not return.

This is damage measured not in project timelines, but in generations.

 
Our Prayer
We, the undersigned citizens of India, respectfully appeal to:

The Hon’ble President of India, and
The Union Government of India
to urgently and compassionately intervene in the national interest and ensure that India’s hills are not stripped of protection through policy interpretation, and to direct a comprehensive review of the EIA Notification, 2006.

We pray that the law be revisited and amended to ensure that:

All hill tunnelling projects, regardless of road category or size, are brought under mandatory Environmental Clearance.
No hill cutting, blasting or drilling is permitted without Environmental Impact Assessment, cumulative impact studies and public consultation.
Judicial protections granted by the National Green Tribunal are upheld and not diluted through executive interpretation.
India’s hills are recognised as critical ecological assets, not expendable construction material.
This is not anti-development.
This is pro-life, pro-safety and pro-future.

If there are no hills tomorrow, there is no tomorrow.

🌱 Protect the hills. Protect the nation.
✊ #HillNahinKalNahin

Yours sincereky,

B N Kumar - Director, NatConnect Foundation.

Jyoti Nadkarni - Kharghar Hill & Wetland forum