Then R Nirmal Kumar, Tamil Nadu’s Energy and Law Minister, introduced a son-in-law. “If you look at all those who are now so worried and crying out here, it is for only one thing – either for the G Square son-in-law, or for those who took black money there and invested it,” he said.
The reference was to V Sabareesan, son-in-law of former Chief Minister M K Stalin, whose name has repeatedly figured in political allegations surrounding G Square, a real-estate company. Nirmal Kumar was suggesting that the anger over the TVK government’s decision to scrap the Parandur airport was driven not by concern for Tamil Nadu’s infrastructure but by financial interests around land.
Across the aisle, Thangam Thennarasu, the former finance minister and veteran DMK leader who had been defending the Parandur project, rose. Nirmal Kumar was unimpressed. “What is wrong in saying ‘G Square son-in-law’?” he asked. “The whole town called him ‘G Square son-in-law’. What is wrong with that? This is not a PT period for everyone to keep getting up and sitting down for everything.”
Beyond transparency
By now, Tamil Nadu’s new experiment in legislative transparency was producing something besides transparency. It was producing television.
Since the TVK government began live-streaming Assembly proceedings, citizens have been watching politics in numbers previously unusual for a state legislature. The August 5 Budget session drew over a million views on prominent YouTube streams alone unlike less than 20,000 views it used to gain on Youtube channels of private TV news channels. “Vijay versus Udhayanidhi” clips migrate rapidly to Instagram, television channels cut vertical videos from Assembly exchanges, mistakes become memes before legislators have left Fort St George.
The House has acquired an audience, and the House appears increasingly conscious of it.
On Monday, Thennarasu, known for his soft tone and tenor, answered Nirmal Kumar in the language of the new medium. “If he wishes to take his reply and the debate to this level, I can also pay in the same currency,” Thennarasu said. “If you are going to say ‘G Square son-in-law’, can I ask for which other ‘lottery son-in-law’ you are going to take the new airport?” That reference was to Public Works Minister Aadhav Arjuna, son-in-law of lottery businessman Santiago Martin.
An infrastructure debate had briefly become a son-in-law exchange.
But underneath the theatre was a serious disagreement over one of the most consequential decisions of Vijay’s young government. Nirmal Kumar challenged the foundations of the previous government’s case for Parandur. He said claims that environmental clearance had been obtained were wrong and that an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) had not yet been completed.
“There are a large number of water bodies there,” he said, arguing that agricultural land capable of three crop cycles was among the reasons the project had struggled to advance.
Thennarasu’s reply moved the debate back from “sons-in-law” to runways.
Parandur, he argued, was not chosen casually. Earlier possibilities including Sholinganallur, Padalam and Pannur had been examined, while Chennai’s geography sharply constrained the search: the Bay of Bengal lies to the east, industrial areas and the Pulicat ecosystem complicate expansion northward, the Tambaram military airbase restricts possibilities southward, along with Kalpakkam and the Vedanthangal bird sanctuary.
That pushed the search west, eventually producing a choice between Pannur and Parandur. Technical feasibility, high-tension power lines, industries requiring relocation, displacement and land cost were considered, Thennarasu said. Parandur emerged from those comparative studies and eventually received the Union government’s approval.
His larger argument was about time. “But after all these years of this project, after we have travelled this far, if you abandon it today, when is it ever going to come?” he asked.
With compensation already paid for much of the acquired patta land and acquisition substantially advanced, abandoning Parandur would work against Tamil Nadu’s economic growth, he argued. Nor, he said, could Chennai’s existing airport simply absorb expansion without enormous demographic and geographical complications around densely populated Meenambakkam.
Keerthana defends move
Industries Minister S Keerthana then offered the government’s most substantive defence of Vijay’s decision.
The land already acquired would not be abandoned, she said. Alternative industrial projects would be developed there “in a manner that does not affect the people,” generating jobs and economic activity.
But her case against an airport rested principally on what the land already does. Parandur, she said, supports three-season rice cultivation – Samba, Thaladi and Sornavari – along with groundnut, sugarcane, pulses and millets. Farmers there supply rice to the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation and the public distribution system.
“If you ask what kind of land this is, it is a place with perennial water availability – agricultural land where cultivation can take place even when there is no rainfall,” she said.
Keerthana also pointed to two canals, arguing that the drainage system carries water toward the Adyar River and Chembarambakkam Lake. Destroying that hydrological landscape, she said, could increase Chennai’s flood risk. The government, she stressed, was not rejecting Chennai’s need for another airport. “We need an airport. We need a second airport,” she said.
Its immediate answer is to expand capacity within the existing airport corridor, including the proposed Terminal 5 and associated road infrastructure, which Keerthana said could serve requirements for another decade. A second airport, she said, would eventually be developed somewhere that minimised damage to residents, industry, agriculture and cultivable land.
The Parandur debate is becoming very interesting. To one side, land appears on a planning map: acreage, connectivity, runway orientation, acquisition cost and future passenger capacity. To the other, the same land appears as paddy, groundwater, canals, homes and memory. Both are descriptions of the same place. The government is in the uncomfortable business of deciding which reality acquires a runway.
House proceedings travel fast
But Monday’s debate revealed another transformation occurring inside Fort St George. Legislative speech once travelled outward slowly – through reporters’ notebooks, evening bulletins and carefully selected political clips. Now, the citizen can watch the hesitation before an answer, the interruption, the laughter, the member jumping up and the minister telling him to sit down. That changes politicians too.
Experienced legislators are now learning the truth that the most replayed 30 seconds may matter politically more than the next 20 pages of a policy note. DMK veteran K N Nehru voiced that anxiety on Monday, pointing to “how quickly reels are cut from Assembly live streaming and go viral” even when the Speaker later expunges inappropriate remarks from the official record.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay being felicitated by Parandur Green Airport Project Opposition Struggle Committee, President G. Subramanian, Secretary S.D. Kathiresan, and other committee members at the Secretariat, in Chennai on Tuesday. (@CMOTamilnadu X/ANI Photo) 
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