New Delhi: The much-awaited Phase IV project of the Delhi Metro, connecting Saket to Lajpat Nagar and Inderlok to Indraprastha, will rip through Delhi’s green lungs, the Ridge. But there is no public outcry. Delhi’s Ridge doesn’t stir public conscience any more. It has no patron saint. Snaking through central and southern Delhi, the metro project got the nod from the Supreme Court in April 2025 to chop more than 100 trees and construct inside the Aravalli Ridge—the city’s oldest and most contested green space.
Delhi’s Ridge is a mystery for many. Is it an endangered forest? Is it untapped gold for construction projects? Is it a den of crime?
Often referred to as Delhi’s ‘green lungs’, it is an extension of the Aravalli ranges and spans across Delhi, intersecting with monuments and modern buildings. It has been the subject of many books and surveys, even during the British era, but this 7,000-hectare forest in the middle of the capital city remains undefined, and more importantly, unprotected on paper.
“To be protected as a forest, the Ridge needs to be first treated like a forest by the authorities. But there is a lot of fuzzy thinking that lies at the base of anything to do with the Ridge—be it restoration or protection,” said Pradip Krishen, naturalist and environmentalist. “But even now, the Ridge’s soil is still alive, and if we wanted, we could make it a model urban forest.”
The biggest problem with the Delhi Ridge is that nobody can agree on where it begins and ends.
For environmentalists, the only way to restore the Ridge is to first define its boundaries, and notify it as a ‘reserved forest’, according it the highest level of protection a forest can get in India. Despite the involvement of the Supreme Court, National Green Tribunal and a Ridge Management Board, this notification has eluded the Ridge for three decades as authorities file claims and counter-claims. Meanwhile, the forest continues to lose its green cover to construction and development projects like the Phase IV Metro. Restoration remains a faint hope.
There are multiple stakeholders who each claim a part of the Ridge. It is divided piecemeal across the city’s land-owning agencies, which makes governance difficult and restoration almost impossible. Encroachments, illegal tree felling, and land diversions have eaten into the Ridge for years, and whatever is left of the existing forest is covered in invasive plants. Over the years, ecologists like CR Babu and Pradip Krishen have tried to diagnose and restore the Ridge’s green cover, but to no avail.
“Delhi’s Ridge has too many players—it is owned by the forest department, the DDA, the MCD, and each one has a different definition of what a forest is,” said Ravi Agrawal, Director of Toxics Link, an environment justice NGO, and former member of the Ridge Management Board. “And barren forest land is no one’s baby, so no one will take the responsibility for it.”
‘Intent to protect’ vs actual protection
But Delhi’s Ridge hasn’t been forgotten. It keeps bubbling up in public conversations and among policy makers and city environmentalists. Everyone knows what the problem is. Nobody has found the right way or the will to fix it.
On 14 October, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta’s office announced that 4100 out of 6100 hectares of the Southern Ridge forest had been “declared” as a reserved forest. The announcement was hailed as a long-overdue win for the forest, especially because the Southern Ridge is the largest segment of Delhi’s Ridge.
“This decision will effectively protect and enhance Delhi’s greenery,” said the CM in a press statement.
However, the Ridge was ‘declared’ as a Reserved Forest even back in 1913 by the British Indian Government, and again in 1994 by the Delhi forest department.
The main hurdle is the next step—the official notification of all five Ridge areas as reserved areas, because only that will ensure that the land is treated as such. Until now, only 103 hectares of the 7777 hectares of the Ridge have actually been notified by the government, even though it was declared back in 1994.
A 2014 book, An Introduction to the Delhi Ridge by retired IFS officer GN Sinha, describes the difference between an ‘intent’ to protect the Ridge versus the actual protection. The Indian Forest Act of 1927 has two Sections relating to the notification of reserved forests—Section 4 and Section 20. While Section 4 says that the government intends to protect any forest area as ‘reserved’, it is only after a Section 20 notification that the protection kicks in.
“This is what the fight for the last 30 years has been—to notify the areas under Section 20. But before they notify it, they need to verify and demarcate the area of the Ridge on the ground,” said Agrawal, who has campaigned for the Ridge’s protection since 1992. “That is where they’ve failed for so long.”
According to Nisheeth Saxena, former Chief Conservator of Forests (CCF) of Delhi, the forest department has been trying for years to finish the ground verification of the Delhi Ridge and mark its boundaries.
“There is no count of how many times the verification process has started. It was ordered by both the Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal, and sometimes even the Delhi High Court,” he said. “Almost every year the process started, but because of some reasons it was never completed,” he added.
Ground verification of Delhi’s Ridge
Off the road from Delhi’s swanky diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri, lies the Malcha forest and the 14th century Malcha Mahal inside it. Overrun by shrubs and non-native plants, the forest is less a pristine habitat and more a roaming ground for stray dogs and even monkeys nowadays, with a ‘haunted’ monument thrown in. But the entrance through the ram-shackled gates from Sardar Patel Marg, with no signage, shows how it is easy to forget that this forest is part of the billion-year-old ecology of the Delhi Ridge.
It is the perfect example of how the Ridge’s boundaries remain undefined to this date. Until the forest department can verify and settle all claims on the Ridge’s land, they cannot move ahead with protecting it.
The Delhi Ridge has three phases of history, each with its own baggage—the prehistoric history defined its ecology, the British history defined its initial encroachment and fragmentation, and the post-Independence history, which defined all conservation efforts. In each period, new actors came in to claim ownership over the forest. But when the Ridge was officially declared to be a reserved forest in 1994, none of these claims were taken into consideration.
“The important thing to remember is that the forest department only took control of the Ridge in 2004,” said Krishen. “Before that it was the Central Public Works Department, which is not a forest management agency at all.”
When in 2004 the Delhi Forest Department decided to mark out the Ridge’s territory and maintain it as a forest, they were faced with the enduring history of the Ridge—the Indian Army, local villages, the Delhi Development Authority, the Indian Railways, and even the Sports Authority of India all claimed a section of the Ridge as their own. Then began the tedious process of negotiations, In the Southern Ridge, for example, over 21 villages had to be relocated by the forest department back in 2012 to officially demarcate the Ridge area.
“To properly identify and demarcate the Ridge, you need the efforts of multiple authorities,” said Saxena. “The revenue department would make the maps and we would go on the ground, mark out every inch of the land and if it fell into village territory then we had to settle it with the sarpanch and local leaders,” he added.
Even now, places like Sanjay colony and the Maidan Garhi village in Okhla are built on what is officially Ridge land. While the forest department considers them ‘encroachments’, negotiations to clear the area have stalled for years now.
Just as the Ridge is undefined on paper, so is its relationship with the people of Delhi. Across South, North and Central Delhi wherever the Ridge has cropped up, it has been used differently by the citizens—for morning walks, eerie ‘haunted’ retreats, or quiet time for couples.
For the older residents of the city, the Delhi Ridge was the frightening site of the Geeta and Sanjay Chopra kidnapping and murder—an incident etched in public memory.
For the students of Delhi University, the Ridge in North Delhi has long been the hideaway for young couples for long strolls, birthday parties, and proposals. Called the ‘Kamla Nehru Ridge’, it was converted to a biodiversity park in 2016. The monkey-infested park lies a stone’s throw away from the Vidhan Sabha metro station, and even at 6 am, it is populated by college students.
“I used to go to the Ridge even before I knew what it meant for Delhi. It just felt like such a quiet place, all green and lonely, away from the city,” recalled Ayushi Aishwarya, an alumnus of Delhi University. “Only when I started studying history did I know its significance for the city.”
Meanwhile, the Malcha forest has earned a reputation among the city’s ghost aficionados, mainly due to the monument inside. The unkempt nature of the forest, the outcropping of shrubs, creepers and even the occasional jackal add to the ‘haunted’ vibe. The Delhi Tourism Department even tried to bank on this reputation to start a ‘Haunted Monuments’ tour at Malcha in 2023. It was discontinued in a few months.
The Malcha forest was also where naturalist Pradip Krishen first encountered the Ridge. He has taken his dogs on walks inside for over 40 years. It is through Malcha forest that Krishen came to understand the Aravalli Ridge’s original ecology, and also how it was being managed by the various authorities.
Management of the Ridge
Because the Ridge was never officially demarcated, forest land has been used in Delhi for countless non-forest reasons for years now. All around the city are buildings, campuses, and houses on what once used to be the Delhi Ridge, built both before and after Independence. Structures like the Jawaharlal Nehru University, the DLF malls in Vasant Kunj, Hindu Rao Hospital in North Delhi, and even many farmhouses in Sainik Farms have all been built on Ridge land.
And this process did not stop even after the Ridge Management Board was constituted in 1995 to handle all activities relating to the Ridge. The RMB comprises the Chief Secretary of Delhi, the Vice-Chairman of the DDA, the PCCF of Delhi and other government officials. It also has two spots designated for representatives from civil society and NGOs, which have been empty since 2021, after Ravi Agrawal’s term.
The RMB is the nodal body for all things Ridge-related, and is supposed to protect the boundaries of the ridge, maintain it as Delhi’s ‘green lungs’, and ensure there are no encroachments. Its actual work, however, falls short.
“If you look at the RMB’s actions, all they’re doing is allowing land conversions. Road projects, metro projects, defence projects—they’re saying yes to everything on the Ridge,” said Agrawal. “They’re not focused on restoring the Ridge, they’re just focused on letting others use it.”
A quick glance at the minutes of the RMB meeting confirms Agrawal’s statements. In the last meeting on 9 July 2025, 14 out of 20 items on the agenda were to do with diversion of land, construction, or tree felling in the Ridge, and the Board approved them all.
Even with the RMB, the last two decades have seen cases of illegal tree felling and encroachments inside the Ridge. Most recently, the Supreme Court found DDA officials guilty of felling over 1,100 trees in the Southern Ridge, and ordered compensatory afforestation.
Ridge and restoration
Then there is the problem of the ubiquitous Keekar tree—an unfortunate colonial invasion and inheritance that the Ridge just hasn’t been able to shake off.
Amid all the land disputes, illegal encroachments and boundary problems, the present Ridge languishes in a ‘rutputty’ state, as Krishen puts it. Centuries of disregard have left it barren in some areas, overrun by invasive species in others, and overall in a general mess where the original biodiversity is barely visible.
“The rocky landscape of the Aravallis is not fit for most kinds of trees, and the forest department has found that out the hard way after numerous attempts to ‘green’ the Ridge failed,” said Krishen. “And this has been going on since the time of the British.”
The only plant that managed to survive and even thrive on the Ridge’s soil was the prosopis juliflora, better known as the ‘vilayati keekar’, brought to Delhi sometime in the 1920s. Of Mexican origin, this invasive plant was first planted in Delhi by British official William Mustoe, who was the Superintendent of Horticulture in New Delhi at the time. The keekar soon took over most of the Ridge. It captures nutrients and water meant for other plants, and prevents them from receiving sunlight because of its huge canopy. Now, it makes up 90-95 per cent of all trees inside the Ridge.
This keekar remains one of the Delhi Forest Department’s biggest headaches, because they cannot just cut it down. The de-keekarisation project remains an enduring fantasy, sounds good in seminar speeches and PPTs, but its actual implementation falls short because of one law.
The Delhi Preservation of Trees Act 1994 (DPTA) prohibits any tree, invasive or not, from being cut in the city. Passed in the same year that the Delhi Ridge was declared as a reserved forest, the DPTA has been the biggest thorn in the side of the forest department when it comes to removing the keekar—they must remove the tree without actually cutting it.
In 2021, the department decided to bring in the experts—both Pradip Krishen and C.R. Babu, botanist and the head of Delhi University’s Centre for Environment Management of Degraded Ecosystems, were part of an advisory board to devise a keekar removal plan.
Babu, who had previously restored Ridge landscapes and built the Yamuna Biodiversity Park and the Aravalli Biodiversity Park in 2004-5 with the DDA, proposed a scientific method of removing the keekar by lopping off its large branches and roots.
“I was asked to come in and give a proposal for Keekar removal. I did so, five years ago. I told them that instead of cutting the entire tree, we could cut off its main branches and roots, and it would die off on its own,” said Babu to ThePrint. “Now, what they’ve done with the proposal, how they have implemented it, is for them to know.”
After a few trials in the Central Ridge, Babu’s scientific plan too did not take off. According to P Vishwakannan, the Chief Conservator of Forests, Delhi, the department is now waiting for the Working Plan of Delhi to be prepared by Dehradun’s Forest Research Institute (FRI) before doing any more keekar removal inside the Ridge.
Planting the right trees
As the final blow, the Delhi Ridge has also suffered from a debilitating lack of understanding of what works locally and what doesn’t.
The issue of restoration, explained Krishen, has suffered from the same malaise capturing all of the Ridge—multiple stakeholders. Over the last three decades, everyone from high court judges to the Lieutenant Governor to the Delhi forest department has suggested and tried their own methods of replanting and restoring the Ridge.
In 2023, the L-G of Delhi VK Saxena had ordered flowering chinar trees—native to Kashmir—and Japanese cherry blossom trees to be planted along the Central Ridge, none of which survived in the rocky soil. In 2019, Justice Waziri of the Delhi High Court ordered sections of the Southern Ridge to be renamed ‘Maafi Bagh’, and allow for compensatory sapling plantations there. However, by 2021, the parcel of land was overrun by saplings planted too close to each other, leaving no space for them to grow.
“The fact of the matter is — no one in Delhi’s forest department is sure of how to go about ecological restoration. It isn’t just planting trees, it is planting the right kind of trees and shrubs and species that will survive in the Ridge without needing too much water or nutrients,” explained Krishen, who worked for over five years to restore the Rao Jodha Desert Park in Jodhpur with native plants from the desert.
For the Ridge, Krishen envisions a restoration that would take into account the original landscape of the Aravallis and Delhi’s soil patterns. The Mangar Bani forest in Faridabad, which is an extension of the Southern Ridge, serves as a good example of a natural ecology that thrives in hard, rocky soil with uneven moisture. Instead of chinars and cherry blossoms, Krishen suggests sturdy trees like dhau and amaltas that are meant for the soil and climate in the Ridge.
“We don’t understand how lucky we are to have such a rich resource like the Ridge in the middle of the city,” stressed Krishen. “No other capital city in the country has a forest or anything like the Ridge.”
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)