India, Dec. 12 -- When a mountain is no longer a mountain

In December 2025, the Supreme Court of India, acting on recommendations from expert bodies including the Union Ministry of Environment, the Forest Survey of India, and the Geological Survey of India, redefined the criteria for what constitutes a "mountain." What might appear as a minor technical adjustment is, in fact, a paradigmatic shift. Moving away from earlier ecological understandings - based on slope, continuity, and vegetative cover - the Court adopted a narrowly physical measure focused solely on elevation and spatial proximity. Under this logic, any landform with less than 100 metres of local relief, or located more than 500 metres from adjacent peaks, is no longer consi...