Vijay targets DMK even while opposing new airport

Delivering his over 11 minute speech from atop his open van, he told the crowds from the 13 villages that had gathered at a marriage hall in a place called Podavur that he wanted to launch his field work by pledging his support to the farmers who had been on a warpath for 910 days protesting the selection of Parandur as the site for the second airport for Chennai.

Though Vijay was earlier scheduled to address the villagers at Eganapuram, the prime venue of the protest where people normally hold meetings and agitations, and a five acre land was also levelled for the purpose, rains in Kanchipuram districts wreaked havoc, turning the ground slushy. Pointing the unsuitable ground as reason, police shifted Vijay’s meeting venue to the marriage hall.

In the negotiations carried out with the police till late Sunday night, the proctors reluctantly agreed for Podavur with the condition that Vijay would address the crowd in an open space and not inside the hall. Anyway, the surging crowd let the police allow Vijay speak from atop his open van, on which he drove into Parandur and drove away without setting foot on the ground.

Expressing concern over global warming, which was leading to adverse climate change that made itself evident every year through the heavy floods in Chennai, Vijay said the government that decided on constructing the airport at Parandur by destroying 90 percent of the water bodies and 90 percent of agricultural land was definitely anti-people.

When the State government could pass a resolution against the setting up of the tungsten mining project at Arittapatti, which he himself supported wholeheartedly, why did not take the same stand against the airport at Parandur, Vijay asked. People of Paranthur were also ‘our own’ as those of Aritra Patti, he said.

Why the State government did not opposed the airport project was it stood to gain in some way, which the people had understood well, he said, pointing out why the government failed to treat Paranthur in the manner in which it looked at the Salem 8-way road scheme and the Kattupalli harbor project.

Calling for the reconsideration of the Parandur airport project, he demanded the selection of a site where no agricultural land would be affected as development was important though destruction in the name of development could be detrimental to all.