700-day-long protests ignored, villagers affected by Parandur airport project threaten to migrate to Andhra

CHENNAI: With the protests they sustained for nearly 700 days failing to evoke any response from the authorities, the dejected villagers of Parandur and its neighbourhood, whose lands have been identified for the second airport for Chennai, said they have decided to migrate to Andhra Pradesh.

Even since August 2022, when the Union government announced the site comprising 13 villages, including Parandur and Eganapuram, as the location for the greenfield airport, the people there, most of them farmers, have been on protest against acquiring their land.

They staged various forms of agitations – sit-in stirs, protest marches, hunger strike, hoisting black flags, boycotting polls, etc. Every night, the villagers gather at Eganapuram and sit on silent protest. This has been continuing for nearly 700 days.

However, after the initial enthusiasm, the opposition parties have not paid much attention to the protest, leaving the villagers to fight for themselves.

Meanwhile, keen to complete the construction of the airport by 2028, the authorities have already initiated land acquisition. Last year, they even extended the spread of the airport from the initial plan of 4,870 acres in 13 villages to 5746 acres in 20 villages.

With little hope left and no reason to stay back, the dejected villagers said on Saturday that they have decided to bid goodbye to Tamil Nadu and move to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. “It is better to move out of Tamil Nadu rather than live as a slave here in our own land,” said Subramanian, an affected villager of Parandur.

On June 24, their representatives would travel to Andhra Pradesh to meet the Chittoor Collector to seek permission to stay there. The rest of the villagers would continue to protest, this time by taking out a ‘grief march’ on that day.