Vijay seeks nod to meet opponents of greenfield Chennai Airport

Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam had passed a resolution against the ambitious project and now Vijay has sought police permission to visit the protest villagers on January 19 or January 20 to express solidarity with them.

Chennai: Villagers of Ekanapuram have been protesting against the greenfield airport for Chennai for the past 900 days and no politician except Naam Tamizhar Katchi (NTK) expressed his support for the people who are not willing to part with their lands.

Actor-politician Vijay, whose Tamilaga Vetri Kazhagam (TVK) has passed a resolution against the ambitious project, has now sought police permission to visit the protest villagers on January 19 or January 20 to express solidarity with them.

NTK and now TVK are two political parties that oppose the project which environmentalists and locals say will be a disaster for ecology in the region as the land where the airport will come up is surrounded by dozens of water bodies.

“Vijay wants to visit the village and meet the people who are protesting against the government for the past two years. We have already expressed our opposition to the project and Vijay believes he should express solidarity with the people in person,” a TVK source told DH.

The source expressed the hope that the police will permit Vijay to visit the villagers.

Notwithstanding the opposition from the villagers, the government is going ahead with the task of acquiring over 3,700 acres of the total 5,746 acres of land needed for the airport which is expected to be built at a cost of Rs 20,000 crores. The state government owns the remaining 1,917 acres of land in Parandur, Ekanapuram, and surrounding villages that will play host to the airport.

The government has announced that it will provide 3.5 times the market rate as compensation besides an alternate land for housing and a government job for each family affected by the land acquisition for airport, but these promises were also not acceptable to the villagers.

Villagers of Ekanapuram did boycott the April 19 Lok Sabha polls in protest against the airport but their opposition hasn’t brought a change of heart in the government.

The government has also received a report from a committee of experts, including from the IIT-M, who looked into the concerns raised by villagers on issues like water flow.

The idea of a greenfield airport for Chennai was first conceived in 2006 but was dropped after PMK, an ally of the then ruling DMK, red-flagged the location, Sriperumbudur.

For about 15 years, the government could not finalise a location till the DMK dispensation zeroed-in on Parandur in July 2022. The existing Meenambakkam airport is struggling to handle the ever-increasing rush despite modernisation plans by the AAI.