Centre must stop current #GAILPipeline project in TN. If necessary, can re- route lines along National Highways to reduce impact on farmers....

DMK working president M.K. Stalin demanded on October 7, 2017, that the Union government immediately halt the implementation of the GAIL natural gas pipeline project across agricultural lands in western Tamil Nadu. Stalin pointed out that laying high-pressure gas pipelines directly through lush farming acreage in Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Erode, Namakkal, Salem, Dharmapuri, and Krishnagiri severely endangered agrarian livelihoods. He urged authorities to adopt alternative routing along national highways to avoid devastating productive cultivable tracts.

Stalin highlighted that local farming communities had staged persistent, peaceful agitations against the coercive acquisition of their ancestral lands. Laying pipelines across fields permanently prohibited farmers from planting deep-rooted trees, digging borewells, or constructing farm structures, substantially diminishing their economic survival. He recalled that the previous DMK government consistently advocated laying industrial pipeline networks along designated highway margins to avert agrarian displacement.

The DMK leader emphasized that economic infrastructure development should never proceed by bulldozing rural agrarian welfare. He urged the central petroleum ministry and state administration to heed the farmers' united plea. Stalin affirmed that the DMK would firmly support agrarian protests until agricultural holdings were safeguarded.