CM Vijay Scraps Parandur Airport Project in Assembly, Proposes New Terminal at Chennai Airport; DMK, BJP React

Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay informed the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly on August 24 that his government has decided against building the proposed second airport for Chennai at Parandur in Kancheepuram district, citing the scale of displacement it would cause to local farmers and villagers who had long opposed the project. The Parandur greenfield airport had originally been proposed by the erstwhile DMK government in August 2022, with the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO) as the nodal agency.

In place of Parandur, Vijay said the government will develop a new Terminal 5 at Chennai's existing Meenambakkam airport in collaboration with the Airports Authority of India, aiming to raise the airport's capacity to around 55 million passengers a year, along with a new approach road and flyover to ease congestion until a fresh site for a second airport is finalised.

The chief minister said a new location for Chennai's second airport would be identified only after technical feasibility studies by expert teams, and only at a site where there is no local opposition, without naming any specific alternative location.

DMK president and former chief minister M.K. Stalin criticised the decision, calling it not merely a change in policy but an "irreversible setback" for Tamil Nadu, and said it would set the state's development back by several years.

BJP leader K. Annamalai acknowledged the cancellation but warned that identifying a new site, securing clearances, acquiring land and completing construction afresh could take another decade. He noted that Chennai's existing airport, spread over roughly 1,300 acres, already lags well behind airports in Hyderabad (about 5,500 acres) and Bengaluru (about 4,000 acres) in capacity.