The Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) government has announced the cancellation of a series of projects initiated by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which governed Tamil Nadu from 2021 to 2026. Among them are the Parandur Greenfield Airport project, the Kancheepuram New Town development, the Global Sports City plan, the Guindy-Velachery flyover and nearly 50 temple-related infrastructure projects.
The pattern is not new. As reported by Frontline India, records dating back to 1991 show that changes of government in Tamil Nadu have repeatedly been accompanied by decisions to shelve or alter projects associated with political predecessors. While the DMK has generally refrained from publicly announcing the cancellation of AIADMK projects when returning to power, successive All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) governments have announced the shelving of several DMK-era initiatives. The TVK government is now following a pattern that has existed for decades.
The DMK itself did not formally announce the discontinuation of former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s flagship Cradle Baby Scheme, launched in 1992. Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi said on record that the scheme had not been shelved. Yet the programme was subsequently scaled down to such an extent that it became ineffective.
The TVK government has offered specific reasons for its decisions. The Guindy-Velachery flyover tender, for example, was cancelled because its alignment conflicted with that of the Chennai Metro line. The Global Sports City, the government says, will be redesigned and improved and therefore requires a fresh assessment.
Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay told the Assembly on August 24 that the Parandur airport project was being cancelled to protect farmers’ interests. The decision also put on hold the proposed extension of the Chennai Metro to Parandur. At the same time, the government announced that two alternative locations had been selected for a new greenfield airport: Manallur near Gummidipoondi, about 50 km north-west of Chennai, and Cheyyur, about 100 km south of Chennai.
The temple-related projects, including marriage halls and commercial complexes, were shelved because of court orders and concerns that additional expenditure would burden the temples. The Vijay government also abandoned the East Coast Road elevated corridor from Thiruvanmiyur to Uthandi, alleging that the DMK government had inflated its cost.
For the DMK, however, the issue is not simply administrative. DMK MLAs and party president M.K. Stalin have criticised the cancellations, arguing that they could affect the State’s competitiveness and its ability to add critical infrastructure over time.
The history of the Maduravoyal–Chennai Port elevated corridor offers a striking example of how such disputes can outlive several governments. According to Richardson Wilson, an advocate and son of DMK MP P. Wilson, the DMK government between 2006 and 2011 decided that Chennai needed an elevated corridor linking Maduravoyal, on the outskirts of the city, with its Port, about 21 km away. The objective was to facilitate faster truck movement and assist industries along the Chennai-Bangalore highway.
Because of the scale of the project, only a small part had been completed by the time the DMK lost power in 2011. Jayalalithaa, after becoming Chief Minister, decided to scrap it.
The Union government had sanctioned Rs.1,800 crore for the project, which was expected to ease congestion on Chennai’s arterial roads by keeping trucks away from city streets. “At that time it would’ve been the longest elevated corridor in India,” Richardson said.
Jayalalithaa argued that part of the expressway was aligned along the Cooum River and could contribute to flooding. The concern was not without precedent. Parts of the old city along the Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS) line flood each season, while the Railways had built tracks over the Buckingham Canal, a waterway carrying water from the north to south of Chennai.
The cancellation triggered a legal battle. “Dr Kalaignar [Chief Minister at that time, M. Karunanidhi] pressed the Union government to go to court,” Richardson recalled. “Sr Adv P. Wilson, then Additional Solicitor General of India, filed a case on behalf of NHAI [National Highways Authority of India]—a rare case where the NHAI sued the government of Tamil Nadu.”
The NHAI won before the Madras High Court, which directed the State government to extend full cooperation to complete the project. The AIADMK government appealed to the Supreme Court, which ordered an expert body to examine the project and report on the claims made by the AIADMK government.
Yet the project remained effectively stalled. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government lost the 2014 election, and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance came to power. No progress was made until 2016, when the AIADMK returned to office.
After Jayalalithaa’s death in December 2016, O. Panneerselvam became Chief Minister and the project was cleared to move forward. By then, however, it had suffered several cost overruns. Following the DMK’s return to power in 2021, the project was again pursued. Competing claims involving contractors and the NHAI prolonged the process for several years.
The Union government has now revived the project, with preliminary work underway at multiple sites. Its cost has risen to nearly Rs.6,000 crore, and completion is expected by the end of 2027. That deadline appears optimistic, given that one official said just over 25 per cent of the work had been completed. Once finished, the project is expected to increase Chennai Port’s cargo-handling capacity dramatically, to over 50 million tonnes.
Political discontinuity has also taken another form: rebranding. In 2026, the DMK claims that at least eight of its programmes were renamed as “Vetri” schemes. That followed an earlier cycle in which some schemes launched by the DMK in 2006 under the “Kalaignar” label were rebranded as “Amma” schemes.
The 2011 AIADMK government went further, abandoning the Kalaignar housing scheme, the health insurance scheme and the free-colour TV scheme. It also converted the new Assembly and Secretariat project into a hospital. An attempt was made to convert the Anna Centenary Library into a Children’s Hospital, but intervention by the Madras High Court preserved the library.
Jayalalithaa’s government had earlier cancelled the Uzhavar Sandhai (Farmers’ Market), a scheme intended to allow farmers to sell produce directly to consumers. Although the concept was described as revolutionary, it had not taken off across most of the State. The Samathuvapuram scheme, which sought to create model villages with representation from all castes and provide housing to economically disadvantaged sections, was also abandoned.
The historical record therefore points to two recurring practices: governments rebrand welfare schemes for political advantage, sometimes after modifying them, and incoming administrations suspend or alter projects associated with their predecessors. Major infrastructure, however, has rarely been physically dismantled simply because a new government dislikes the project. The notable exception was the M.G.R. Memorial, where the AIADMK government in 1991 demolished the existing “umbrella-like structure” and rebuilt the resting place of M.G. Ramachandran.
The more consequential question concerns what happens when political disagreement delays infrastructure whose value extends beyond the governments that commission it. The Maduravoyal expressway spent years caught between governments, legal proceedings and competing claims, while its projected cost rose sharply. Its eventual revival illustrates how a project can survive cancellation but emerge considerably more expensive and delayed.
The decisions over Parandur and the Maduravoyal expressway now sit within that longer history. Both involve governments making fundamental decisions about projects inherited from predecessors, while offering reasons grounded in infrastructure, cost, environmental or public-interest considerations.
For Tamil Nadu, the central issue is therefore not simply whether an incoming government has the authority to cancel an inherited project. It is whether repeated cycles of cancellation, rebranding and revival can occur without imposing substantial costs in time, money and infrastructure capacity. The history documented by Frontline India suggests that this is not a new political phenomenon. What has changed is the scale and significance of the projects caught within it.
