Black flags on the beach: Pattinapakkam fishermen march against the TVK's new Secretariat dream

Chennai's fishing villages sent the Vijay government an unmistakable message on Sunday: ten coastal settlements at Pattinapakkam marched with black flags against the state's plan to build a new Assembly and Secretariat complex on land the community says was reserved for fishermen nearly seventy years ago. The march, organised by the Mylapore Area All Fishermen Village Panchayat Council, gathered at the Mullikuppam–Srinivasapuram Loop Road junction. Black flags were also hoisted along the beachfront — a visible mark of dissent from a community that says its home is being quietly taken from under it. At the heart of the dispute is a government order the fishermen want withdrawn. They say GO 564 sanctions the proposed Assembly and Secretariat complex at Pattinapakkam on land falling under Survey Nos. 4592 and 4593 — land acquired through GO Ms No. 3313, dated 10 October 1957, specifically for the rehabilitation and long-term housing of fishermen in the locality. Using it for an administrative complex, the council argues, contradicts the very purpose for which the land was acquired and breaches assurances given to the fishing community over decades. Sunday's demonstration was not the first. Fishermen staged an agitation on 29 September urging the government to revoke the order and keep the land for coastal communities. With no change in the government's position, the council voted to intensify the campaign through the black flag protest — an escalation from petition to agitation to symbolic march that signals deepening frustration. The fishermen have also turned the state's own data against it. Citing Tamil Nadu's climate vulnerability assessments, they argue that Mullikuppam would remain relatively safe from projected sea-level rise through 2050 and 2100 — a fact, they say, that makes the area more, not less, deserving of recognition as a residential zone for the fishing community under the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification of 2019. What rankles is the asymmetry. The government that speaks of serving the people has not answered a straightforward question: why should the land promised to fisher families — the poorest of the poor on Chennai's coast — be repurposed for the comfort of the state's own administration? A new Secretariat is not a school, a hospital, or a flood defence. It is the government building itself a new address. The council has demanded nothing extraordinary: withdraw GO 564, honour the 1957 acquisition's purpose, and formally recognise the area as a fishermen's residential zone. Until the government responds, the black flags will stay — on the beachfront, and at every junction where the community gathers.