Dropping Parandur can be defended as a social and environmental choice. A project of this scale cannot be treated as an engineering drawing alone when its footprint includes homes, farms and large stretches of water-linked land. If another location can meet the aviation requirement with less disruption, changing the site is legitimate.
But there is a second decision hidden inside the first: whether Tamil Nadu will preserve the timetable for a second Chennai airport. On that question, delay would be costly.
A fifth terminal buys time, not a new aviation ecosystem
Expanding Meenambakkam is sensible. The planned third and fifth terminals could lift the existing airport toward about 55 million passengers a year. That is useful breathing room. It is not the same thing as the previously planned greenfield system, which was conceived for a much larger long-term passenger load, additional cargo capacity and an industrial-logistics ecosystem outside the constraints of the present airport.
Chennai competes for electronics, automobiles, advanced manufacturing, services, tourism and global investment. Aviation capacity is therefore part of the state’s economic infrastructure.
The state is not starting from zero
The earlier selection process examined four broad locations and filtered them for airspace, land, access, obstacles and development potential. That work should be treated as accumulated public knowledge, not discarded history. The government also says fresh alternatives are already shortlisted. The next stage must therefore be a decision process, not another open-ended search.
Protect the villages — and protect the growth clock
The Mandate’s view is straightforward: changing Parandur is not, by itself, anti-development. Allowing the replacement airport to drift without deadlines would be.
The government should publish the criteria for the new site, announce a firm selection calendar, clarify what happens to acquired land and compensation, and separately assess every metro, road and logistics project linked to Parandur so useful infrastructure is not abandoned merely because the airport moves.
A practical benchmark would be to complete site selection within six months and begin the next statutory and technical stages immediately after. Tamil Nadu does not have to choose between people and growth. The location may change. The ambition — and the clock — should not.