The campaigns for the upcoming Tamil Nadu Assembly elections are taking place at a frenzied pace. Madurai Central constituency which has DMK’s PTR Palanivel Thiagarajan and actor-director Sundar C contesting in the AIADMK’s symbol is grabbing everyone’s attention.
BJP leader Annamalai campaigned for Sundar C and exposed the Stalin government over their falsities around the Madurai Metro. Annamalai held up a government document and read from it live. “Look at this,” he told the crowd, brandishing what he described as a letter from the Central Government on the Madurai Metro project. “For all these days, they have been going around spreading nothing but lies. The truth of the matter is that the State Government has never even submitted a formal request asking for a Metro rail system for Madurai.”
The charge cuts to the heart of a live controversy. The DMK government, led by Chief Minister MK Stalin, had announced Metro projects for Madurai and Coimbatore as a flagship urban development promise after coming to power in 2021. A Detailed Feasibility Report was submitted by Balaji Railroad Systems (BARSYL) to Chennai Metro Rail Ltd. (CMRL) in November 2022, proposing a 31 km metro line between Thirumangalam and Othakadai with 20 stations. A Detailed Project Report (DPR) was formally submitted to the Central Government only in December 2024.
But the DPR, when it arrived, was fatally flawed. On 14 November 2025, the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs returned the DPRs for both Madurai and Coimbatore Metro projects citing that both cities did not meet the mandatory population threshold of 20 lakh (2 million) as per the 2011 Census. The Central Government’s letter, which Annamalai read aloud at the rally, stated: “As regards the Madurai Metro Rail project, it is stated that a proposal has been examined. As per CMP of the project duly approved by the State Government, it has been mentioned that the current ridership is justified for BRTS.” In other words, Annamalai argued, the State Government itself had stated in its own submission that Madurai’s ridership figures justified only a Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS), not a Metro.
Annamalai was scathing: “The State Government requested a Metro system exclusively for Coimbatore. In the letter submitted regarding Coimbatore, they merely included a token request, purely for the sake of formality, asking for a Metro system for Madurai as well.” He pointed to Paragraph 5.2.5 of the state’s own submission, where the government explicitly stated a Metro for Madurai was not feasible and requested a BRTS, a dedicated bus corridor system already operational in Ahmedabad, instead.
The population undercount is a key technical embarrassment. Annamalai revealed that former Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami, upon reviewing the DPR post-rejection, found the population figures listed for Madurai were only 1.5 million, when the city’s actual population exceeds 2 million. “He sent a letter stating: ‘Brother, please revise and resubmit the project report. For Madurai, the population count must be increased — it needs to reflect over 2 million people.'” As of the date of the rally, over five months after the Central Government’s November 14 letter requesting a revised report, the DMK government had not submitted a revised DPR.
Madurai traders and residents were equally outraged by the rejection. Citizens questioned why cities like Agra, Patna, and Bhopal, all with populations below the 20 lakh threshold, had been approved for Metro projects, while Madurai was turned away. The Tamil Nadu government did raise this concern publicly, calling it an “uneven application” of the Centre’s Metro Rail Policy, but without submitting a corrected report, the protest remained political rather than procedural.
Annamalai also raised a sharp warning about fare affordability, citing the Bangalore Metro as a cautionary tale. “Due to flawed planning, fares have skyrocketed to between 130 and 160 rupees” in Bengaluru, he said, noting that MP Tejasvi Surya had been forced to take the matter to court to prevent further fare hikes. “Our objective is to implement the Metro project in the most appropriate manner. If our mothers have to pay 80 rupees just to travel from one point to another, no one will bother riding the Metro at all.” He pledged that the NDA alliance’s priority would be to bring the Metro to Madurai at an affordable fare of ₹20.
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