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No formal bid to shift Parandur airport site: DMK MP
The Centre was yet to receive a formal request from the Tamil Nadu government to change the proposed site for the establishment of a new greenfield airport at Parandur in Kancheepuram district, DMK MP P Wilson said
The Centre was yet to receive a formal request from the Tamil Nadu government to change the proposed site for the establishment of a new greenfield airport at Parandur in Kancheepuram district, DMK MP P Wilson said.
Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam spokesperson M Sathya Kumar responded saying his party would take a call at the appropriate time following the due process for the ambitious project.
On August 2, 2022, the then chief minister M K Stalin announced that a second airport for the city would come up at Parandur about 60km from west of Chennai, at an estimated ₹20,000 crore with an annual capacity of 10 crore passengers.
Responding to a query put forth by Wilson in the Parliament, union minister of state in the ministry of civil aviation Murlidhar Mohol denied any such requests from the State government.
Sharing the development on the ambitious project, Wilson said, “To my Parliamentary question regarding whether the new Tamil Nadu government has requested the Centre to change the proposed site of the Parandur Chennai greenfield airport and the details of the request, if so, the Minister Murlidhar Mohol replied with a firm, No.”
In a social media post, Wilson said on Tuesday, “Therefore, the Parandur Greenfield airport project conceived by the DMK government remains unaffected based on the Union minister’s reply.”
M Sathya Kumar said, “We have not procedurally violated anything. We are taking a policy shift based on the ecology. There are many dry lands in Chennai and after doing a feasibility study we will do it at an appropriate time following the due process.”
Recently, TVK minister R Nirmal Kumar indicated the dropping of the proposed new airport in Parandur as it would not be feasible to establish runways due to presence of waterbodies.
The minister for energy resources and law in the chief minister C Joseph Vijay-led cabinet citing the comments made by the Airport Authority of India officials to him, said the land would not be suitable for runways as it comprises of waterbodies.
Stressing that the government accords top priority to environment, Kumar said, “See, one project I will tell you - the Parandur airport. When I was looking at the Parandur airport site 3-4 years back when I met the protests team, the land comprised of 4,000 acres and and the protest team have been cultivating paddy and nearly 800-900 acres. There are water bodies on the Parandur land.”
Kumar further said, “When we checked with few people who have been working on the civil aviation authorities, they said this land will not be able to develop a runway on this land, because this land is completely a waterbody.”
Soon after the announcement by the state government in 2022, residents of Parandur and its nearby villages staged protests for over a year against the then DMK regime claiming that the greenfield project would affect their livelihood.
In January 2025, Vijay who was the President of Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam joined the protest at Parandur and extended his party’s support to the agitating villagers.
