A high-powered delegation of Tamil Nadu ministers will on Tuesday hold talks with representatives of residents from Parandur and Ekanapuram who are unwilling to part with their land for the construction of a greenfield airport, even as the villagers intensified their agitation.
E V Velu, Thangam Thenarasu, T M Anbarasan, ministers for PWD, Industries, and MSME respectively, have invited the villagers to Fort St George, the seat of power of the Tamil Nadu government, on Tuesday to talk about their concerns.
The assurance by the government that the three ministers will listen to their concerns came as villagers were on their way to the District Collectorate in Kanchipuram to submit a memorandum to the Collector about their opposition to the new airport.
District officials held talks with the protesters and requested them to call off the protest given that three ministers have invited them for discussion. “Since the assurance came from the top, we have suspended the agitation. We will meet the ministerial delegation on Tuesday and register our protest against the airport. Our villagers are not willing to give their land for the construction of the airport,” an organizer of the protests told DH.
The villagers are up in arms for the past 150 days against the state government’s decision to develop a new greenfield airport for Chennai in Parandur in Kanchipuram district. The recent rains, according to the villagers, flooded the land that is to be acquired for the airport project, which gave another reason for them to intensify their protest.
Residents of Parandur have also released videos of flooding in their land and asked the government to shift the project from Parandur. They said around 1,317 acres of land of the total 4,000 acres to be acquired for Parandur airport are classified as 'porambokku' (wasteland) of which nearly 1,000 acres are covered by lakes, ponds, and small water bodies.
The new airport, which is expected to be built at a cost of Rs 20,000 crore, will have two runways, multiple terminal buildings, taxiways, aprons, and cargo terminal among other infrastructure. It is being built to handle about 10 crore passengers a year.
Though the number of flights and the daily footfall have increased manifold over the years, the city is bereft of a swanky airport like the ones Bengaluru and Hyderabad boast of. The AAI has been expanding the terminal buildings in the existing airport to cater to the ever-increasing rush but a new airport is long overdue.
Besides Chennai, Tamil Nadu has four operational airports – Tiruchirapalli, Madurai, Coimbatore, and Thoothukudi. The state government has now commissioned a study to explore the feasibility of setting up an airport in the industrial city of Hosur located just outside Bengaluru.