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Tamil Nadu has scrapped plans for a greenfield airport at Parandur after a sustained, 1,000-day protest by farmers of Ekanapuram and neighbouring villages.
Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay told the Assembly the project would be abandoned because it threatened fertile farmland, vital water bodies and rural livelihoods, and that the state will now seek an alternative site for Chennai’s second airport.
For the farmers of Ekanapuram village in Tamil Nadu’s Kanchipuram district, the announcement came after years of waiting, protesting and refusing to surrender. On August 24, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay told the Assembly that his government was abandoning the proposed greenfield airport at Parandur in the heart of Ekanapuram because it would affect agricultural land and disrupt the livelihoods of thousands of farmers and residents. The government will now look for a location for Chennai’s much needed second airport.
Parandur is about 60-70 km west of state capital Chennai, in the rural belt between Kanchipuram and Sriperumbudur. The previous Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government selected it in 2022 for an airport estimated at around Rs 27,000 crore. It was meant to supplement Chennai’s existing airport at Meenambakkam, which is already handling about 30 million passengers a year. The airport was planned with two runways and an eventual capacity of up to 100 million passengers.
But for people living at Parandur, the project meant something very different.
The proposed airport covered more than 5,000 acres across 13 villages. A substantial part was fertile agricultural land, much of it capable of supporting multiple crops.
More than a quarter of the proposed site consisted of water bodies and irrigation structures. The Kamban Canal, an old water channel, was an important part of the local drainage and irrigation system. Farmers argued that its destruction would affect a wider chain of lakes and agricultural lands.
G Sundarrajan of Poovulagin Nanbargal has warned that the water bodies around Parandur act as natural storage areas for Chennai’s rainwater. “If water bodies are destroyed, it will cause floods and drought in the city,” he has said.
For the farmers of Ekanapuram, a productive farm was a workplace, a source of food, a livelihood and an inheritance. It also supported agricultural labourers, cattle rearers and other village occupations. Once farming disappeared, much of the rural economy around it would disappear too.
“The farmers feared that relocation would turn cultivators into wage workers. They were not saying Tamil Nadu should stop developing. They were asking why development had to destroy their landscape when alternatives could be examined,” points out Chennai-based activist T Neethirajan.
M Manivannan, a farmer from Ekanapuram told reporters during the early agitation: “Even if I die, I will not part with even a handful of sand from my land.” For these families, land was not an asset waiting to be monetised. It was security, identity and a means of survival.
Ekanapuram became the face of the resistance because the airport threatened to erase much of the village from the map. The villagers began their protest soon after the project was announced in 2022. They held demonstrations, gram sabhas, fasts and other peaceful protests. They repeatedly passed resolutions against the project. The agitation eventually crossed 1,000 days.
One of the most important questions after the cancellation is why these concerns were not decisive when Parandur was selected. The Airports Authority of India’s 2022 feasibility assessment had recorded extensive water bodies around the proposed site. More than a quarter of the site was covered by irrigation tanks, while a 201-hectare human-made lake was located close to the proposed airport boundary.
Congress Member of Parliament Manickam Tagore has pointed to this record in supporting the cancellation. “The very reasons cited in 2026 for cancellation, that the land is low-lying and waterlogged, were already on record three years earlier,” he said. He has also rejected the description of the farmers as anti-development. “This was not resistance to development. It was a community defending its land, water and livelihoods,” he said.
The previous DMK government had a substantial economic argument. Chennai is a major manufacturing centre, and its industrial belt has attracted automobile, electronics and other investments. A second airport could improve passenger and cargo connectivity.
Former chief minister M K Stalin has called the cancellation an “irreversible setback” to Tamil Nadu’s growth. The DMK argues that Parandur was selected after examining alternatives and that considerable work had already gone into land acquisition, approvals and planning.
But the farmers were never asking the government to stop development. They were asking why development had to begin with the destruction of their farms and water bodies.
Vijay had opposed the Parandur site before becoming chief minister. He visited Ekanapuram and backed the protesters. On August 24, he announced that the project would be abandoned.
His government has not rejected the idea of improving Chennai’s aviation capacity. It will examine alternative locations and expand the existing airport, including a fifth terminal.
About 1,700 acres of private land had been acquired, and compensation had been paid to many landowners. The state now has to decide what happens to the acquired land.
The search for another airport site will be a test. Any new location will have its own farms, villages, wetlands and water systems. Environmental assessment must begin with the landscape, not the project blueprint. Agricultural productivity, wetlands, drainage, groundwater, flood risks and displacement must be considered before a location is finalised. Communities must have a meaningful voice before their land is acquired.