Nine months after the Karur stampede claimed 41 lives and cast a shadow over the state assembly election, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Vijay made his first visit to the city since taking office, defending his conduct during the tragedy while turning his fire on the police response and the previous DMK government.
Dressed head-to-toe in black, Vijay addressed the gathering with visible emotion, admitting the tragedy still weighed on him deeply. “The Karur stampede caused immense anguish. We have lost the children of our sisters,” he said.
The stampede had unfolded during an election rally Vijay held at Velusamypuram, where thousands of TVK supporters and fans had gathered. Forty-one people lost their lives, and more than a hundred were injured that day, in a case that remains under CBI investigation.
Pushing back against claims that his party bore responsibility for the deaths, Vijay argued that managing the crowd was never his job to begin with. “I trusted the police to control the crowd, yet I was blamed for the deaths,” he said.
He went further, questioning why the security arrangements that day failed so badly, and suggested the tragedy could have been avoided had authorities simply flagged the deteriorating situation to his team in time. Instead, he accused them of resorting to “drama” and shifting blame onto him rather than owning up to their own lapses.
“They pinned the blame on me for the Karur incident. I entered politics for the sake of the people. I must put a permanent end to it,” Vijay said, before turning his attention to the opposition. He noted how DMK members had walked out of the Legislative Assembly the moment the term “Party Fund” came up, and alleged corruption running into crores across government departments, a jab at claims that graft had disappeared from government offices. He also reaffirmed an old election promise: fulfilling the pledge to present a ring on behalf of the maternal uncle to mark Arignar Anna’s birthday.
On other fronts, Vijay was equally firm. He assured that the state would not budge on its position over the Mekedatu dam dispute, announced plans to build a memorial in Karur for the victims, and claimed credit for having “put an end to the culture of distributing money during elections.”
Earlier the same day, Vijay had accused the state police more directly of pinning the blame for the September 2025 stampede on him, saying that as the then chief ministerial candidate, he had placed his trust in the police ahead of the rally, trust that, in his telling, was ultimately betrayed by how the day unfolded.
Bureau Report
Leave a Reply