UltraTech Cement’s proposed limestone mine in Jaisalmer has cleared the first formal step of environmental appraisal despite being located 5.8 km from a priority area for the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard. The project now brings into focus a difficult question for India’s environmental clearance system: can mitigation plans protect a fragile grassland habitat when the project developer is already facing allegations of non-compliance at another Rajasthan mining site?
The Union environment ministry’s Expert Appraisal Committee recommended the project for the grant of terms of reference during its meeting on September 10. The recommendation does not amount to final environmental clearance. A terms of reference document defines the scope, objectives, methodology and reporting requirements for the environmental impact assessment that the project must prepare.
That distinction is important. At this stage, the project has moved into the process through which its impacts are to be studied and assessed. The next steps will determine how thoroughly the mine’s effects on the surrounding landscape, wildlife and local communities are examined, and whether the safeguards proposed by the company are treated as enforceable operating conditions rather than broad commitments.
The proposed mine is planned across more than 400 hectares in Joga village, Jaisalmer. It will have a limestone production capacity of one million tonnes per annum and include a stone-crushing unit with a capacity of 1,500 tonnes per hour. The project’s proximity to a Great Indian Bustard priority area gives the appraisal a significance beyond the project boundary because the bird’s priority areas function as crucial retreats and breeding grounds.
UltraTech has proposed measures including water sprinkling for dust suppression, bag filters at the stone-crushing site and steps to minimise disturbance in adjoining areas. The EAC has also asked the company to prepare a detailed Great Indian Bustard conservation plan. That plan must cover site-specific mitigation measures, grassland habitat management, protection of breeding habitat, monitoring mechanisms, institutional arrangements and budgetary provisions.
The committee’s requirements also extend beyond emissions from the crusher. The company has been asked to prepare a plan to regulate anthropogenic disturbance, including grazing, vehicular movement, human interference, waste disposal and other activities within and around the conservation zone. This is a significant framing of the project’s environmental risk: the question is not only whether dust is controlled at the plant, but how mining activity changes the wider habitat and the movement of people, vehicles and livestock around it.
The proposed safeguards are particularly important because the source report links them to a separate case involving UltraTech’s more than 500-hectare limestone mining site in Jodhpura-Mohanpura village in Rajasthan’s Kotputli-Behror district. The company has been accused of failing to implement similar mitigation measures for environmental protection and public health at that site. The allegations concern dust and other impacts associated with mining and stone crushing.
In November 2025, the Central Zone Bench of the National Green Tribunal held the private firm responsible for environmental damage and health hazards in the village. The tribunal ordered the company to stop blasting operations at night, cover the stone-crushing area with tarpaulin, spray water on approach roads, and install or use bag filters, vacuum suction hoods and dry fogging systems for pollution mitigation. A response from UltraTech regarding the allegations was awaited in the report.
The two developments are not the same regulatory proceeding, and the NGT order concerning the Kotputli-Behror site does not by itself establish that the Jaisalmer project will breach its conditions. But the earlier case creates a compliance question that the new appraisal process cannot ignore. If mitigation measures are central to the acceptability of the Jaisalmer mine, the record of implementing comparable measures at another site becomes relevant to how monitoring, institutional responsibility and enforcement are designed.
This is where the terms of reference process becomes more than a procedural milestone. The environmental impact assessment will need to establish the project’s site-specific risks and the methods by which those risks will be measured. The EAC’s request for a conservation plan, monitoring mechanisms and budgetary provisions indicates that the committee is seeking a framework that can assign responsibility and track performance rather than rely only on general environmental assurances.
The project also illustrates the limits of treating an environmental clearance as a single approval event. The mine is proposed near a designated conservation priority area, but the effects identified by the EAC extend across the operating landscape: dust from crushing, movement on approach roads, blasting, grazing, vehicle traffic, waste disposal and human interference. These activities may be managed through separate conditions, but their combined effect will determine whether the surrounding grassland remains usable as habitat.
The available information does not establish the eventual outcome of the Jaisalmer proposal. The project has received a recommendation for terms of reference, not final approval, and the supplied material does not provide the findings of an environmental impact assessment, public-hearing responses or a final decision by the competent authority. It also does not provide UltraTech’s response to the allegations connected with the Kotputli-Behror site.
That uncertainty makes the design of the next stage consequential. A credible assessment will have to connect the mine’s proposed one-million-tonne annual output and 1,500-tonne-per-hour crushing capacity with practical controls at the site and in the adjoining conservation zone. It will also need to explain how compliance will be monitored, which institution will review the results, what budget will be available for conservation measures, and how breaches will be addressed.
For the Great Indian Bustard, the issue is the relationship between habitat protection and industrial activity in a landscape where a priority area can sit only a few kilometres from a proposed mine. For the clearance system, it is a test of whether environmental safeguards are measurable, funded and enforceable. The next important milestones are the preparation of the environmental impact assessment and the conservation plan, followed by the regulatory decisions that will determine whether the project can proceed and under what conditions.
