Black flags on the Loop Road: Chennai's fisherfolk take on Vijay's ₹1,200-crore Secretariat

On Sunday, the fishing villages strung along Chennai's coast from Nochikuppam to Srinivasapuram will do what governments fear most from the poor: they will raise black flags. The protest is aimed at the state government's plan to plant a ₹1,200-crore Secretariat-Assembly complex on their shoreline at Foreshore Estate, Pattinapakkam. The fishermen have asked every village to hold peaceful protests. Their demands are modest and decades old: return the lands belonging to Mullikuppam and Mullimanagar to the villages and earmark them for future expansion of their settlements; build houses for the fishermen living along the Marina Loop Road, most of whose homes were built 40 to 50 years ago. The demands have been submitted to the Chief Minister's Special Cell. "We hope the government will take a positive decision on the issue. Since we are the stakeholders who matter the most, we request the government to appoint someone to listen to our grievances before taking such a major decision. We are holding protests only because nobody has discussed the issue with us," said fishermen leaders G.R. Vijayan and K. Bharathi. The anger has a paper trail. On September 8, 2026, the government issued an order granting in-principle approval to initiate the construction process for the new Secretariat-Assembly complex at Foreshore Estate — a sea-facing plot of 25.55 acres where the power centre would shift from the historic Fort St George. As protests from the fishing community and political parties swelled, the government clarified that only the detailed project report process is underway and the project is at a preliminary stage. The fishers are not persuaded: they want the government order formally rescinded. On September 29, hundreds of members of the community, including women, sat in protest at Srinivasapuram Beach while another section took out a black flag procession — amid heavy police presence, barricaded stretches and traffic diversions. Their fear is concrete, not sentimental. A 24-plus-acre complex on the shore threatens the traditional fishing grounds, public access to the sea, and the entire working ecology of the coast: parking boats, weaving nets, drying and selling fish. "Fishing is not just our work — it's our heritage," one fisherman said at an earlier protest. "Our children grow up learning this trade, and they need access to the seafront to continue our way of life." The pattern is what stings. A government elected on promises to the common people now plans its palace on the poor's shoreline — and treats the actual stakeholders as an afterthought, consulted only after the government order is signed. The DPR may be "preliminary," but the fisherfolk have learned from experience: on this coast, preliminary is where the bulldozers begin. On Sunday the black flags go up on the Loop Road. The question they carry is simple, and it is the Dravidian movement's oldest question: whose city is Chennai — the people who work its sea, or the power that wants its shore?