The high court stalled the proposed Elapully brewery in Palakkad and the ambitious Sabarimala Greenfield Airport in Kottayam.
Published Dec 24, 2025 | 4:25 PM ⚊ Updated Dec 24, 2025 | 4:25 PM
Kerala High Court. (Supplied)
Synopsis: The Kerala government received a twin blow as the high court stayed the proposed Elapully brewery in Palakkad and the ambitious Sabarimala Greenfield Airport in Kottayam. The court’s decision striking down permission for the Elappully brewery project in Palakkad triggered sharp and immediate responses across the political spectrum.
With the 2026 Assembly elections looming, the Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF government suffered a twin blow from an unexpected quarter — the Kerala High Court.
In a rare coincidence, on 19 December, the court stalled two of the government’s much-touted flagship projects: The proposed Elapully brewery in Palakkad and the ambitious Sabarimala Greenfield Airport in Kottayam.
The rulings have not only dented the government’s development narrative but also triggered a race against time to plug the legal and procedural gaps flagged by the court before the electoral clock runs out.
The fate of the proposed ₹600-crore brewery, the ethanol complex at Kanjikode in Palakkad, has been thrown into uncertainty after the high court quashed the state government’s preliminary sanction for the project, citing lack of legal backing and serious factual inaccuracies.
A Division Bench comprising Justices Sathish Ninan and P Krishna Kumar set aside the 16 January 2025 government order that had granted initial approval to Oasis Commercial Pvt Ltd to establish an ethanol unit, multi-feed distillery, IMFL bottling unit, brewery, malt spirit plant and winery.
The court was acting on public interest litigations filed by residents of Elappully Grama Panchayat, who challenged the government’s move as an unlawful pre-emption of statutory authorities and local self-government institutions empowered to grant clearances under existing laws.
The judges found merit in the contention that the “preliminary sanction” had no statutory basis and was issued on flawed premises.
Crucially, the bench noted that the government order proceeded on the assumption that the project site was located within the Kanjikode industrial area, whereas records showed the land actually falls under Elappully Grama Panchayat, around five kilometres away.
This factual error, the court held, vitiated the decision-making process. Environmental and resource concerns also weighed heavily.
The petitioners pointed out that Palakkad is a dry region and that the project would require nearly 5,000 kilolitres of water per day, posing a serious threat to groundwater and the lives of residents.
The court expressed disquiet over the Kerala Water Authority granting consent for water supply on the very same day the company applied, without any evident audit or assessment.
Observing that several factors relied upon by the government were “not factually correct in their entirety,” the bench quashed the order, effectively stalling the project.
However, the court left the door open for the government to reconsider any fresh application, provided it is based on accurate facts and due process, keeping the brewery project in limbo for now.
Along with that, the fate of the ambitious Sabarimala Greenfield Airport Project has also been thrown into deep uncertainty after the high court nullified the land acquisition proceedings, delivering a stinging indictment of the state government’s planning process.
Justice C Jayachandran quashed the acquisition on the grounds of a fundamentally flawed Social Impact Assessment (SIA), holding that the exercise violated both the letter and spirit of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013.
The judgement was following a writ petition filed by Ayana Charitable Trust, which challenged the state’s notification under Section 11(1) of the 2013 Act and sought to quash SIA reports along with the Expert Group Appraisal Report.
The court accepted the contention that the process, meant to be “humane, participative, informed and transparent” as envisaged in the Act’s preamble, had instead become a mechanical justification for a predetermined decision.
Tracing the project’s trajectory, the court noted that the site selection itself dates back to April 2017, when a four-member IAS committee was constituted after a review meeting chaired by the chief minister.
Within weeks, the committee recommended Cheruvally Estate as the most suitable site, and by July 2017, the government formally approved this recommendation.
Subsequent orders in 2020 and 2022 expanded the acquisition plan to 2,570 acres, subject to an SIA study conducted by the Centre for Management Development.
An Expert Committee constituted in January 2025 endorsed the SIA, leading to the April 2025 government order to proceed with acquisition — now struck down. A crucial fault line identified by the court was the sheer scale of land proposed to be acquired.
For an airport designed for Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) operations, even accommodating wide-body aircraft like the Boeing 777 or 787, the “ideal” land requirement is around 1,200 acres.
Against this benchmark, the Sabarimala project’s demand for 2,570 acres — more than double — remained unexplained.
Comparisons with Kerala’s existing airports only sharpened the court’s scepticism: Thiruvananthapuram operates within 700 acres, Kozhikode within 373 acres, and Kochi within 1,300 acres. Even Kannur, often cited for its size, spans about 2,300 acres.
The government’s argument that excess land was needed for “future growth and expansion” failed to convince the court, which pointed out that the SIA report offered no clarity on what such expansion entailed, when it would occur, or how much additional land would actually be required.
In the absence of these answers, the acquisition was deemed arbitrary. By directing the authorities to restart the process with a fresh SIA, the court has effectively reset the Sabarimala airport project to square one.
Whether the airport will eventually take off now depends not just on political will, but on the government’s ability to justify — transparently and convincingly — why this much land is truly necessary.
Even as political reactions to the high court’s quashing of land acquisition for the proposed Sabarimala airport are awaited, the court’s decision striking down permission for the Elappully brewery project in Palakkad triggered sharp and immediate responses across the political spectrum.
Leader of the Opposition in Kerala Assembly VD Satheesan welcomed the verdict, stating that the court upheld the very concerns raised by the Opposition — lack of transparency, procedural lapses and the absence of a proper study before approving.
Senior Congress leader and Congress Working Committee member Ramesh Chennithala echoed the sentiment, calling the order a vindication of the prolonged struggle he had led as Opposition Leader against the state government’s policy of allowing breweries and distilleries.
Pointing to acute drinking water scarcity in Elappully, Chennithala alleged that the project was marred by “massive loot and corruption” and demanded that the government withdraw from it without delay.
The LDF government, however, rejected allegations of illegality or corruption.
Excise Minister MB Rajesh said the high court had not found fault with the government’s decision-making, stressing that permission was granted based on a written assurance from the Kerala Water Authority to supply water.
He argued that the approval was cancelled only because the Water Authority later withdrew its assurance in an affidavit and because the proposed land was located five kilometres away from the notified industrial area.
Rajesh underlined that the court itself had observed that a fresh application, if submitted with proper documents, could be considered, asserting that this would not have been the case had there been corruption.
Together, the twin rulings have exposed fault lines in the Left government’s flagship development pitch at a politically sensitive moment.
With the Assembly elections a few months away, the setbacks have not only slowed marquee projects but also forced the government into a defensive scramble to rework approvals to secure political brownie points before voters.
(Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
