Parandur residents’ protest against Chennai’s new airport completes 100 days

When indianexpress.com visited the village in August, residents said they did not want to move out of their ancestral land and homes, no matter how much money or alternative land the government would provide as compensation.

They dropped a plan to take out a protest march to the secretariat in Chennai following talks with ministers. And on the 100th day, some of them were to tonsure their heads as a mark of protest but decided against it after officials intervened.

People of Eknapuram and other surrounding villages near Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu carried out their protest for the 100th day on Thursday against the proposed second airport for Chennai in #Parandur. pic.twitter.com/lUy3yX1n6M

— Janardhan Koushik (@koushiktweets) November 4, 2022

Candles in their hands, villagers protested inside the panchayat office amid heavy rain on Thursday, raising slogans such as “save the waterbodies”, “leave out Ekanapauram”, “don’t cheat Ekanapuram people”, “we need agriculture” and “we don’t need airport”.

The airport will be built at a cost of Rs 20,000 crore by the state government. A total of 4,563.56 acres of land will be acquired for the project and 1,005 households will be affected, ministers have said.

The government offers 3.5 times the market value for land acquired for the project in 13 villages.

At a recent conference, Industries Minister Thangam Thennarasu said the new airport would play a pivotal part in the state government’s vision for a $1 trillion economy. “It is the need of the hour. Only if this airport comes up can we move onto the next level of growth,” he said.

As per the PTI news agency, the minister also said that nearly 80-85 per cent of the land acquisition processes for the expansion of airports in Coimbatore, Madurai and Tiruchirapalli had been completed.