Heavy police deployment in TN's Madurai after protest against airport expansion

Chennai: Heavy police deployment was made in Chinna Udaippa village in Tamil Nadu's Madurai district where the local people are protesting against the airport expansion project.

More than one thousand police personnel have been deployed in the area to maintain law and order situation in the area.

Protesters are seeking three cents of land and a house in exchange for their land to be taken away for the Madurai airport expansion project. It may be noted that officials will be reaching Chinna Udaippa village for the land acquisition programme. The Madurai airport, located on 502.25 acres, is acquiring 633.17 additional acres. “543.64 acres have already been handed over for further expansion,” said officials.

Madurai Collector M.S. Sangeetha has given administrative sanction for land acquisition to lay a road alternative to the one stalling the construction of a compound wall around the acquired land.

The airport has built a compound wall of 12.36 km on the newly acquired land. Though the Madurai airport got a new terminal building in 2010 and international flights are being operated to Singapore, Dubai, and Colombo, the airport is yet to get international status.

The airport handled 14 lakh passengers during 2023-24 and the 24x7 operation became a reality on October 1.

AAI Chairman M. Suresh says the number of flights taking off from the Madurai airport will increase manifold in the next six months.

Virudhunagar MP B. Manickam Tagore told IANS that it may take more time for the airport to get international status, but it will have more domestic flights.

Manickam Tagore said, "We expect flights to connect Madurai with Varanasi and Pune very soon.” Madurai already has air connectivity to Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and New Delhi.

The airport has reconfigured the terminal building to handle the increasing number of passengers. According to senior officials of the Madurai airport, these measures will help in the swift clearance of passengers and reduce their waiting time in queues.

Officials said that while presently the terminal building and the runway are good enough to handle the present traffic of the airport, the passenger-handling capacity of the airport will get saturated as more services come to Madurai.

Airport officials told IANS that the expansion of the airport is the only solution to overcome this saturation and hence land acquisition is necessary.