Nearly a year after the tragic stampede here that killed 41 persons during his party rally, TVK founder and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay on Friday made his first visit to this district, and trained his guns against the DMK for attempting to gain “political mileage” from the incident. He also slammed the Dravidian party for restraining him from visiting this western town.
In his maiden visit also after becoming CM, Vijay faulted the police for not alerting him about the swelling crowd at the TVK venue on September 27 last, nor taking any steps to cancel the meeting as the crowd had become unmanageable to control.
“The police could have alerted us that the crowd was swelling and become unmanageable to control. The police have all the right to cancel the meeting. Without doing so, the police escorted us on the highway,” Vijay said in his address at a public meeting here.
He could not meet the affected 41 families in Karur last year but had those affected families brought near Chennai and personally consoled them.
At the meeting today, Vijay said, “I trusted the police fully and even thanked them at the meeting. I didn’t know about the drama. Who is responsible for this. Under whose instruction was all this done,” he asked.
“They tried to gain political mileage,” out of the tragedy, he said in an apparent reference to the DMK, then in the ruling saddle.
He said the Karur stampede has caused him immense anguish.
“We have lost children of our sisters in the 2025 Karur stampede,” he said.
The CM, clad in black attire, also announced to establish a memorial on behalf of his party Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) for the victims of the Karur stampede.
“You (DMK) accused me of hiding and uttered many things against me,” Vijay said at the meeting and claimed that the police had advised him against visiting Karur immediately after the stampede occurred.
“I am not a politician who looks for political gains. I have come to politics to thank the people, to serve them. Did you think I will run away. If you ask me to chose between money and people, I will say people..people alone are important to me,” Vijay, who founded the TVK in 2024, said.
He even quit his lucrative and popular acting career to serve the people full-time.
He further said that the DMK’s defeat in the April Assembly election is not enough. “Ensure a lasting defeat to the DMK,” he urged the people.
Without directly naming them, Vijay hit out at DMK leaders V Senthil Balaji and E V Velu, resorting to his oft repated “DMK, an evil force” remark and appealed to the people to teach a fitting lesson to that party in the local body polls.
The Madras High Court had on Wednesday granted anticipatory bail to Senthil Balaji and his brother V Ashok Kumar, who apprehended arrest in a case involving an alleged Rs 35 crore bribe offer to destabilise the TVK government. Similarly, Velu, the PWD minister in the previous regime, is under the radar for alleged corruption.
Sharpening his attack, Vijay said that while the DMK ran a corrupt regime raising “party funds” from each government department, the AIADMK was a spent force. He claimed of a “collusion” between the two parties, Tamil Nadu’s traditional archrivals.
Two months after his TVK took over, there is “no corruption” in government offices; not even a single paisa is being taken as graft, and people were being given due respect they deserved, he said. People should boldly say they will not give bribe, he said and exhorted them to take his name if someone demanded such illegal gratification. Also, he said his party uprooted the cash-for-votes culture in the state.
The CM criticised the DMK for doing precious little over the Mekedatu dam issue and said party president M K Stalin was the Chief Minister when the Supreme Court rejected the petition.
Asserting that he would safeguard Tamil Nadu’s rights, Vijay said the Delimitation exercise, harming state’s interests will not be accepted.
On the gold ring scheme for newborns, he said it will be launched on Dravidian icon Annadurai’s birth anniversary.
“People are on our side,” he said rejecting the opposition allegation of horse-trading against his government.
Later, he took out a road show, with people queuing up on either sides of the road in good numbers. He waved at them and greeted them with folded hands.
