CHENNAI: Recalibrating his position on the reason for cancelling the proposed greenfield airport in Parandur, Energy Resources and Law Minister R Nirmalkumar on Friday that the assessment that constructing a runway at the site was not feasible had come from a high-level expert committee, and not from the Airports Authority of India (AAI) or the Directorate General of Civil Aviation as he had stated earlier.
The clarification came a day after DT Next mined official records and reported that the AAI or DGCA did not express reservations over the feasibility of a runway at Parandur, contradicting the minister’s earlier claim.
Addressing the media, Nirmalkumar said the committee headed by retired IAS officer S Machendranathan had examined the environmental and social implications of the project, though its report is yet to be placed in the public domain.
"The Machendranathan committee's report has not yet been released. We will speak about it in detail at the appropriate time… The government's position on the project will be announced soon," Nirmalkumar said, recalling that Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay’s first public protest after launching the TVK was against the proposed airport project.
The minister said the committee, along with other expert groups, had flagged the presence of more than 1,000 acres of water bodies within the project area and the likely impact on more than 10,000 families. These findings formed the basis of the government's assessment of the project, he said.
The then DMK government had constituted the Machendranathan committee in early 2023 to study the environmental, hydrogeological, and rehabilitation aspects of the project. The panel, comprising experts from IIT-Madras and Anna University, was tasked with evaluating the ecological footprint of the project, its impact on water bodies and agricultural land, and measures required to mitigate displacement.