Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 24: The Tamil Nadu chief minister C Joseph Vijay on Monday announced his government’s decision to scrap the previous Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government’s greenfield Parandur airport project in Kancheepuram district which was strongly opposed by the local villagers and had also raised environmental concerns.
The announcement invited strong criticism from the DMK chief and former chief minister MK Stalin who termed the cancellation of the airport project an “irreversible setback” to the state’s growth and said it would set Tamil Nadu’s development back by several years.
Mr Vijay, whose party the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) had opposed the Parandur project right since its formation, announced its cancellation in the State Assembly. Dropping of the Parandur airport project was also one of the major election promises of the TVK before it was voted to power in the Assembly elections early this year.
The opposition leaders of the DMK demanded the government to allow a debate on the cancellation of the airport project but the Speaker J.C.D. Prabhakar pointed out that an announcement made under Rule 110 of the Assembly cannot be debated. In protest, the DMK members walked out of the Assembly.
Fulfilling a major pre-election promise made to local villagers and environmentalists, Mr Vijay while scrapping the airport project made his government’s stance clear, “I know how important an airport’s role is for industrial growth, and I even support that. But an airport in Parandur is simply not acceptable. We had asked the previous government to reconsider this project. Now, after detailed discussions with officials, and as per the promise I made to you, our government is dropping the Parandur airport plan.”
While the government stands firm with the protesting residents, the Chief Minister assured that Chennai’s aviation needs would not be ignored. The state would soon announce a detailed plan for a new airport at an alternative site, alongside immediate plans to expand the existing Chennai airport, he said.
He said a new terminal, Terminal 5, would be developed in the north-western area of Chennai airport in collaboration with the Airports Authority of India (AAI) along with an approach road and a flyover. The CM said he had consulted experts on the creation of a new airport, and a few alternative sites had been identified without causing much damage to farmland settlements.
He said Chennai airport was currently handling 30 million passengers a year. “After the completion of Terminal 5, the passenger capacity will increase by another 55 million a year. It will improve the services and transport facilities until a new airport is completed,” he said.
The Parandur airport project proposed to create a new civil international airport in the Kancheepuram district on a total area of 2,172.73 hectares at a cost of ₹29,144 crore. It was a ‘greenfield airport project’, that is the airport would have been built on completely undeveloped land rather than expanding on a previous site.
Local villagers and farmers in Parandur had been protesting against the project since it was proposed by the then DMK government in August, 2022. The main concerns of the local people were the taking over of lands in 13 villages and the displacement of nearly 1,000 families for the airport project.
The Union Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) had granted in-principle approval to the project in March, 2025 and had appointed the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation Limited (TIDCO) as the nodal agency to begin land-pooling, master planning and bidding for the site. In March, this year, just before the Assembly elections, the then DMK government had designated the project as a “Special Project” under the Tamil Nadu Land Consolidation Act.
The announcement was greeted with enthusiasm by the people of Ekanapuram, which is one of the villages that would have been affected by the Parandur project and thanked CM Vijay, while the DMK was critical of the Vijay government. Parandur is located near the Chennai-Bengaluru highway, roughly 28 km from Sriperumbudur.
Attacking the TVK government, Mr Stalin in a post on X said Tamil Nadu’s interests cannot be ‘mortgaged for petty political considerations.’ “Dropping Parandur is not Change. It’s an irreversible setback for Tamil Nadu’s growth. The announcement made today by the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu to drop the Parandur International Airport project will set the state’s development back by several years. Tamil Nadu’s interests cannot be mortgaged for petty political considerations,” the DMK chief said.
Referring to the statement on Parandur by CM Vijay in the Assembly under Rule 110, which disallows any discussion, he said “shutting out” opportunity for debate was deeply troubling. Stalin said Tamil Nadu leads the country across sectors, from electronics exports to automobiles, and that a world-class airport in its capital was not merely desirable, but absolutely essential. “Rejecting such a vital project is not change. It is a massive disappointment,” he said.
He said the site was carefully selected after evaluating all available alternatives and land acquisition was almost completed, with several stages of preparatory work and approvals completed. “The site was carefully selected after evaluating all available alternatives, and the land acquisition process has been almost completed. With several stages of preparatory work and approvals already completed, we had drawn up plans to ensure that construction could begin at a rapid pace once we returned to office,” he said.
“If the new government now starts all over again, identifies another location and goes through the entire process before work can even begin, Tamil Nadu’s growth trajectory itself will DROP,” the former CM added.
Stalin claimed that under the Dravidian model government, Tamil Nadu became the first port of call for investors. “This decision threatens to push the state to the bottom of the table. The Chief Minister’s announcement is nothing short of a jackpot for competing States.”
He said that without industrial growth, economic targets of one trillion USD or 1.5 trillion USD are simply impossible to achieve. “Taken without foresight, planning or consultation, this decision by the TVK government is a devastating blow to the employment dreams of Tamil Nadu’s youth,” the DMK chief added.
Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly Udhyanidhi Stalin, also slammed the government over the move. The DMK leader said his party-led government had initiated the project considering the growing air passenger numbers and future needs. The airport project was approved by the Airports Authority of India and the Union Civil Aviation Ministry.
The DMK government invested huge sums towards providing three times compensation to landowners and resettlement. “After all this, if the project is being dropped for petty political reasons, it will lead to big financial loss to the government,” he said in a post on ‘X.’
The proposed greenfield airport at Parandur was planned to be one of Tamil Nadu’s largest and most ambitious infrastructure projects. Designed to meet Chennai’s long-term aviation needs, the massive airport was engineered to handle an ultimate capacity of 100 million passengers per year.
According to the pre-feasibility report prepared by Louis Berger International for TIDCO, the project was estimated to cost around Rs 27,000 crore. The development was planned to be completed in four distinct phases, with the first phase alone requiring an investment of Rs 13,854 crore.
To build this massive facility, the state government had proposed acquiring around 5,369 acres of land across nearly 20 villages in the Kancheepuram and Sriperumbudur regions. Before the project was cancelled, the government had already completed site clearance, obtained key approvals from the Centre, and acquired nearly 1,700 acres of land. Alongside the airport, several major road networks, Metro connectivity, and logistics projects were also planned.
Since the previous DMK government announced the project in 2022, local farmers and activists had been protesting relentlessly. For over 1,000 days, residents from Ekanapuram and surrounding villages fought to save their homes and livelihoods.
Their fight was never just about getting better compensation. Out of the 5,369 acres marked for the project, nearly half (47.6%) is fertile, irrigated agricultural land that yields three crops a year. Even more critically, a quarter of the entire area is covered by lakes, canals, and water bodies. Building a runway on wetlands was seen as an ecological disaster waiting to happen.
The Parandur struggle was a defining moment for Chief Minister Vijay and his TVK party. In January 2025, Vijay had visited the protesting villagers in Kancheepuram to lend his support. “I am not against development, but I oppose this airport if it comes at the cost of nature,” he had said, pointing out that destroying natural water channels was a key reason why Chennai faces devastating floods year after year. Now in power, he has converted that commitment into state policy, citing the land’s ecological fragility as the primary reason the site is unsuitable for a runway.
The search for Chennai’s second airport is a saga that spans over two decades. It began in 1999, with various sites like Sriperumbudur being proposed and later shelved due to high land acquisition costs and the strict regulations of the 2013 Land Acquisition Act.
There is no doubt that Chennai urgently needs more aviation capacity. The Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India (CREDAI) recently emphasised that the city risks losing major business investments and economic opportunities if its aviation infrastructure isn’t upgraded.
According to CREDAI, even with ongoing upgrades to boost the current airport’s capacity to 35 million passengers annually, industry experts and government projections show that Chennai airport will reach complete saturation between 2028 and 2032.
With Parandur finally out of the picture, the search for Chennai’s second airport goes back to the drawing board. Vijay has instructed officials to identify an alternative location where the acquisition of fertile agricultural land is kept to an absolute minimum, ensuring that people’s homes, fields, and livelihoods are protected. Until then, the focus will shift toward squeezing more capacity out of the existing Chennai airport to keep the state’s industries running smoothly.