Parandur airport: Villagers send petition to Collector

CHENNAI: The villagers of Eganapuram sent representations to the Kancheepuram Collector seeking to change the location of the greenfield airport during a Gram Sabha on Tuesday.

The Central government finalised Parandur as the location for the new greenfield airport and since then the villagers of Parandur, Egnapuram, Nelvoy and other villages in the surrounding area have been protesting to change the location of the airport. Since around 5,000 acres of land is required for the airport, farmland and water bodies from all the villages are being taken by the government.

The villagers have been protesting in various ways including black flag hoisting and night protest every day. Already on August 15 and October 2nd during the Gram Sabha, the villagers together with the panchayat president Sumathi Saravanan, sent similar representations to the Kancheepuram collector. Right from the beginning, the villagers are keen not to leave their farmland. They said that they cannot survive without farming and termed farming as their only livelihood.

On Tuesday morning when the Gram Sabha convened in Eganapuram, the villagers and the village panchayat President Sumathi Saravanan signed and sent representations to the Kancheepuram district collector for the third time. All the villagers attended the meeting without considering the rain to save their land.