Chennai: Amid mounting opposition from local villagers and activists, the stage seems to be set for Chennai’s second airport in Parandur, nearly 70km from the city. The Union government told Parliament Monday that it has granted the site clearance for the project to be developed on 2,011.3 hectares of land. The development comes nearly two years after the Tamil Nadu government finalised Parandur as the site for the Greenfield airport.
Proposed at a total cost of Rs 32,704 crore, the airport in Chennai’s neighbouring Kancheepuram district is expected to handle up to 100 million passengers annually. The MK Stalin-led DMK government says the airport will play a crucial role in the economic development of Tamil Nadu as the city’s existing airport is operating near capacity.
“With no modern infrastructure, the airport is struggling to accommodate the increasing cargo and passenger traffic, underscoring the urgency of developing this new airport,” Rajya Sabha MP Advocate P. Wilson wrote to Civil Aviation Minister Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu in 3 July.
However, activists and locals are opposed to the project and have flagged viability, ecological, and livelihood concerns.
“Instead of acquiring land and spending so much on building a new airport, it will be sufficient if the state develops the existing airport,” said Chennai-based RTI activist and GIS consultant Dayanand Krishnan. Krishnan added that the state government should explain to the citizens how the new airport will benefit the economy and tourism in Tamil Nadu with data.
The project, which requires the acquisition of nearly 2,172.73 hectares of land, will directly affect 13 villages spread across Kancheepuram and Sriperumbudur Taluks. As per the pre-feasibility report prepared by the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO) Limited in March, 47.46 percent of the total land to be acquired is currently used for agricultural purposes while 26.54 percent is covered by water bodies.
Residents of the affected villages have been protesting for 730 days. G. Subramanian, a resident of Ekanapuram, said the villagers will not give up protesting. “We will try to protect our land as much as we can. We will also approach the court if everything fails,” he said.
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A look at the airport development project
The project was first officially announced in 2007 by then Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi, who said the new airport would be set up near Chennai and operate in a dual airport system with the existing international airport in Meenambakkam. In January 2022, Padalam, Thiruporur, Pannur, and Parandur were identified as the possible sites for the project. After a pre-feasibility study in August 2022, the state government finalised Parandur as the final site.
Situated nearly 70km from Chennai in Kancheepuram district, the proposed project in Parandur will have a dual runway, taxiway, apron, and isolation bay. The airport master plan will be executed in four phases between 2029 and 2047 to reach full capacity. TIDCO has been appointed as the nodal agency for the development of the airport.
The state also planned several other infrastructure projects linked to the new airport, including a new six-lane link road, to ensure seamless connection between the airport and the existing Bengaluru-Chennai NH-48. Besides this, the Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) has undertaken a feasibility study to expand the city’s metro from Poonamalle to Parandur (44km), which will run parallel to the Chennai-Bengaluru Expressway.
Chennai’s need for an additional airport
In his letter to the civil aviation minister, Wilson stated that the city’s existing airport is not equipped to handle large planes with a capacity of over 400 passengers or double-decker planes.
“Many long haul widebody international flights don’t prefer Chennai Meenambakkam airport as the ‘preferred point of call’ for foreign destinations due to the lack of infrastructure and modern updated facilities,” he said, adding that there are no aerobridges in the airport to dock large planes.
The Rajya Sabha MP said the international operators seeking to expand their flight operations prefer alternate options such as Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
With more than 10 lakh passengers every month, the Chennai International Airport is the fifth busiest airport in India in terms of passenger traffic. It has four terminals, one domestic (T1), two international (T3 and T4), and one integrated terminal (T2).
Nearly 72 percent of the traffic is domestic, 22 percent international, and 6 percent 0cargo — making Chennai airport a domestic hub, Krishnan said.
However, he added that the government has been reluctant to approve the Airports Authority of India (AAI)’s proposal for a satellite terminal at the Chennai airport. The AAI had put forward the initial proposal six years ago to address the growing traffic, but the plan was paused because of logistical reasons. Last month, the AAI submitted a revived proposal for the terminal to the TIDCO.
730 days of protests
From boycotting the recent Lok Sabha elections to shaving their heads, residents of 13 affected villages have held protests against the Parandur proposal nearly every day for the last two years.
The affected villages include eight in Kancheepuram Taluk (Paranthur A, Paranthur B, Valathur, Padavur, Nelvoy, Thandalam, Madapuram, and Thodur) and five in Sriperumbudur (Gunakarapakkam, Edaiyarpakkam, Akkammapuram, Ekanapuram, and Mahadevi Mangalam).
Of the total 2,172.73 hectares of land to be acquired, nearly 1,032.21 hectares is irrigated agricultural land and 355.22 hectares is dry farmland, constituting over half of the total that has lush paddy and finger millet fields.
Tamil Nadu public works, highways, and minor ports minister E.V. Velu said last year that the displaced families would be given compensation nearly three-and-a-half times more than what their land was worth. But, the locals have rejected the offer.
“What is the point in getting compensation after losing everything you have?” said Subramanian, who has three acres of paddy fields in Ekanapuram village. He accused the government of ignoring the demonstration and alleged that the protesters faced harassment from the police at times.
At least 2,500 families will be displaced in Ekanapuram, he said.
“How can we leave all this? Parandur never had a water problem when most of Tamil Nadu faced water scarcity. You can’t find any other place like this in the state. We use no pump sets. Now, the government is planning a runway over a water body,” Subramanian said.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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