After the Supreme Court’s decision on 20 November 2025, accepting a new definition of the Aravalli Hills and Ranges proposed by the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change, environmental groups and citizens have strongly protested the move. The definition states that an Aravalli hill is any landform rising 100 metres or more above its local relief, and an Aravalli Range is a group of two or more such hills within 500 metres of each other. Protesters argue that this could exclude large areas currently considered part of the Aravallis and open them to mining and construction. Protests were reported in places such as Gurugram and Udaipur, where activists, along with lawyers, held banners reading “Save Aravalli, Save the Future” and “No Aravalli, No Life,” and demanded complete protection for the hills, warning that diluted safeguards could harm ecological balance, increase pollution, reduce groundwater recharge and desertification defences, and affect communities across Delhi-NCR, Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat (here, here, and here). The government, on the other hand, clarified that this is a misleading narrative and nothing would be done without relevant studies (here, here).
Amid this, a video showing a massive crowd is being widely shared on social media (here, here, and here), with claims that it shows a large number of farmers in Rajasthan participating in a protest related to the Aravalli Hills. Let’s verify the claim made in the post in this article.
Claim: The video shows a large number of farmers in Rajasthan participating in a protest over the Aravalli Hills.
Fact: The viral video does not show farmers in Rajasthan protesting over the Aravalli Hills. It is a compilation of two unrelated videos from Maharashtra. The first clip shows the palanquin procession of Shri Sant Gajanan Maharaj in Khamgaon, Buldhana district, from July 2025, while the second clip shows a bullock cart race held at the Hindkesari Ground in Pedgaon, Satara district. Both videos predate the Aravalli Hills controversy, which began in November 2025. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
Upon reviewing the viral video, we found that it is not a single clip but a compilation of two unrelated videos. Both clips had circulated earlier with different claims and were debunked by Factly at the time.
The first segment shows the palanquin procession of Shri Sant Gajanan Maharaj in Khamgaon, Buldhana district, Maharashtra, from July 2025. These visuals had earlier gone viral with the false claim that it showed a large crowd attending Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ in Bihar, which was later fact-checked and debunked.
The second segment features visuals from a bullock cart race organised at the Hindkesari Ground in Pedgaon, Satara district, Maharashtra. This clip had also previously circulated with the false claim that it showed a massive crowd at Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ rally in Bihar in August 2025. As a result, both videos clearly predate the Aravalli Hills controversy, which began in November 2025.
To sum up, old, unrelated videos from Maharashtra are falsely shared, linking them to the Aravalli Hills protests.
