'Karur could still impact Jana Nayagan's box-office success if Vijay and the TVK do not get their act together,' points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The politics of the Karur stampede -- where 41 people died -- in poll-bound Tamil Nadu has started playing out, mostly sickening and at times revealing.
Post-tragedy, Tamizhaga Vettri Kazhagam, and more so the party's actor-founder Vijay's ignorance and inexperience have been pouring out as insularity and insolence, both translating as an inherent sense of insecurity.
Post facto, it showed up first when Vijay and Co scooted from the tragedy site to the shelter of their Chennai homes, without doing the right thing by being in the midst of it all, as leaders and cadres from other political parties, starting with the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam did, in their place instead.
Their insecurity showed up when party General Secretary 'Bussy' N Anand and another leader, C T R Nirmal Kumar, sought anticipatory bail from the Madras high court, arguing that the local office-bearers alone were responsible -- and accountable -- for organising the ill-fated roadshow.
Even Vijay in his much-delayed, badly scripted four-minute video reaction four days later, did not express remorse either over the tragedy or over his leaving Karur without being around to be of help to the victims.
Egged on by social media debates, the people were expecting him to own up 'moral responsibility' or 'dhaarmeeka poruppu' in Tamil, for the tragedy.
Instead, he taunted 'CM Sir', a reference to Chief Minister M K Stalin -- whose political experience is as old as his age, 51 years -- and asked him to spare his cadres and 'do whatever you want with me'.
To the people of Tamil Nadu, such unconventional addressing of the CM and a senior politician -- it used to be 'Stalin Uncle'/'CM Uncle' earlier -- was in bad taste, even earlier. Now, it's complete.
If Team Vijay thought that his fans/cadres would be impressed by his video, for asking the CM to 'do whatever you want with me, but spare my cadres', they were yet to recover from the shock, including now from their own independent neighbourhood.
The middle-of-the-road voters, who were still overawed by the increasing crowds for Vijay's weekend rallies, were unimpressed. Before the assembly elections in March-April, they might have forgotten, if not forgiven the stampede as they did in the case of the ruling DMK, vis-a-vis the 2024 Kallakurichi hooch tragedy that claimed 60 lives.
But the continued sense of insensitivity and irresponsibility has raised fresh questions about Vijay-TVK's ability to govern, if given a chance, before they were ready for the job.
If anything, the voters are also coming to believe that Vijay's choice of weekends for his rallies need not have been aimed at causing least inconvenience to the people, as claimed, but was instead aimed at capturing the daylong TV spotlight on him, for people to be hooked on to their TV sets at their homes, followed by a full week of TV talk shows and the like.
For now, three different vacation benches of the Madras high court, including one in Madurai, have declined anticipatory bail for the two TVK leaders, denied a CBI probe as the petitioners have not shown any evidence that the state police probe was biased, and also constituted a special investigation team (SIT) under north zone IG of police, Asra Garg, to take over the investigations from the Karur circle inspector -- to give it the heft it required.
The court also questioned the police on the non-filing of FIR over Vijay's caravan not stopping after pushing down some fans running into it on their bikes, and also kind of attested the FIR against Vijay's controversial billionaire aide Adhav Arjuna for threatening a 'Sri Lanka/Nepal kind of revolution in Tamil Nadu' over the Stalin government's allegedly biased approach to be police investigations.
Though Adhav Arjuna subsequently edited his social media post first, and later removed his social media post, neither the police nor the people were impressed.
They saw it as a threat to national security -- and at some point, Vijay too may be asked to explain his position in the matter, if and when he opened up to newsmen, whom he had kept at an arm's length.
Significantly, the high court directed the state government to formulate a standard operating procedure for granting permission for such political rallies.
As the government pointed out, the matter was already pending before another bench, at the instance of the TVK, which had protested that one too many conditions were being laid only for the party.
Outside the courts, TVK leaders even asked if the Stalin government had the guts to lay down similar conditions for much bigger rallies by Prime Minister Narendta Modi, for instance.
As a police veteran pointed out, in the case of the PM, there was already a standard operating procedure drawn by his security team, and all that police in the states he visited was to comply with those instructions. This applied to various other VVIPs and VIPs, including Union and state ministers, the President and governors.
For now, based on the court's observation, the police denied permission for AIADMK chief ministerial aspirant Edappadi K Palaniswami's scheduled rally in Namakkal, asking the party's local organisers to select another venue.
Stalin has since said the state government would come up with a standard operating procedure that would become a model code for the entire country.
For now, Team Vijay can be expected to move appeals in the multiple cases they are involved in. Already, 'Bussy' Anand and Nirmal Kumar have appealed to the Supreme Court for anticipatory bail.
One political fallout is that a continuing court case, that too in the national capital, could keep avoidable media focus on the TVK and Vijay, and various media interpretations would be given to the Tamil Nadu voter on a daily basis.
Even without it all, the TVK having been put on the defensive, multiple media speculation is on over the future of the party and its electoral strategy.
Pre-stampede, Vijay had reiterated that the ruling DMK in the state was his 'political enemy' and the BJP at the Centre was the 'ideological enemy'.
Another bit of news was drowned out in the tragedy later in the day, but en route to Karur, at Namakkal on the fateful day, Vijay had gone beyond declaring that he was the TVK's chief ministerial candidate, and ran down the AIADMK, thus closing the door on EPS' alternative poll strategy sans the BJP even six months after their swearing by it.
While no one is talking about Vijay abandoning the TVK and politics, even party cadres are not sure about their electoral chances. Inside, at lower levels, the question of a safe seat for Vijay, too, is being discussed all over again.
There are also questions about the party's 'staying power' and Vijay's own continuing interest in politics, post-poll, if the TVK does not win a respectable number of seats, or at least poll a meaningful vote share.
Neither of it is a good omen.
Even without the Karur tragedy, no one except his fans-turned-cadres had expected the TVK to win the sssembly polls without a credible ally, for Vijay to become chief minister at the party's first electoral outing.
Those hopes, even if it were only wishful thinking, have now to be shelved, at least for the interim. Until Vijay comes out of his cocoon, reassesses his current strengths and weaknesses, and works on both, such speculation will be rife. And he does not seem to be moving, or at least making the right moves.
Together, the events of the past week have raised the hopes of the DMK-led INDIA bloc under Stalin, though a grey area remains over Congress leaders talking to Vijay on the night of the Karur tragedy just as they had talked to the chief minister.
But no one expects anything dramatic to evolve out of it. Also, the more the DMK feels confident about returning to power, and less the TVK and Vijay become an attractive alternative at least to threaten the party over seat-sharing, the INDIA allies in the state would know which side of their bread is buttered, and which side they might end up losing, if they tried to act over-smart.
Of course, eyebrows were raised when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi spoke to Vijay after talking to Stalin on the fateful night. Congress insiders say it was only to give a kind of reassurance to Vijay, in the context of possible fresh attempts by the BJP at poaching the confused TVK as a poll ally, post-Karur.
Likewise, the AIADMK's EPS too should be relieved that the 'Vijay threat' to split the anti-DMK votes may have subsided, at least for the present, giving him the required time to reorient his poll strategy and campaign tactic.
However, there is a rider. The 'loss of Vijay' means that EPS too has lost the leverage to negotiate with the AIADMK's BJP ally, first in terms of re-admitting estranged AIADMK leaders and then over seat-sharing, where the national party is more than likely to flex its muscles more than expected.
Anticipating the same, AMMK's T T V Dhinakaran, who alongside three-time AIADMK chief minister O Pannerselvam, had separately quit the NDA after the BJP projected EPS as the chief ministerial candidate next year, has begun going soft on Stalin and kind of harsh on Vijay.
Just as earlier speculation claimed that both EPS and Vijay were keeping their options still open, with the possibility of the former splitting ranks with the BJP -- rather courageously, despite possible pressures from central agencies -- there were also claims about TVK and TTV doing business, likewise, sans EPS.
Of equal interest in the midst of it all is the BJP-led Centre despatching Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Minister of State Dr L Murugan, both Tamils, for offering condolences to the victims, just as Stalin had done the very same night, after despatching three senior ministers to work alongside, or take over from controversial former minister and local DMK boss Senthil Balaji.
In her hour-long news conference in Karur, Nirmala Sitharaman sounded conciliatory towards the state government, as befitting the occasion, leading to instant social media debates about the BJP's medium-term plan to count on the DMK's 22 Lok Sabha members if the Modi government's parliamentary majority came under threat between now and the Lok Sabha polls of 2029.
However, the BJP as a party despatched eight NDA members of Parliament on a fact-finding mission, headed by another Tamil, yesteryear movie star Hema Malini.
While she too sounded conciliatory even while claiming that there was 'something fishy', her BJP colleague Anurag Thakur, fired the first salvo by complaining about the district administration not briefing the MPs about the incident.
Charitably for the DMK, a section of the local media countered Thakur by pointing out how the district collector/magistrate had accompanied Ministers Sitharaman and Murugan, and also shared the dais with them, at the news conference.
According to them, the state administration was not duty-bound to brief political party delegations, even if it comprised only MPs.
If anything, Anurag Thakur only embarrassed the Centre when critics began recalling how the BJP had not despatched such a quick-fix team to the Hathras stampede site in UP (in 2024, when 121 people died) and the Gambhira bridge-collapse in Gujarat (July 2025, with 22 dead), apart from Manipur, which has been burning for two long years.
As they pointed out, all three states had BJP governments.
Post-tragedy, the DMK's Stalin has continued with his tirade against the BJP Centre, on federal issues and 'Tamil identity'. While the party has this vote-bank already on its side, the Karur tragedy has shifted poll gears, to focus on administrative capabilities, where again he has scored but is taking the campaign focus away from it.
From now on, the political focus will also be on the SIT investigation, including possibly with the conduct of the CRPF personnel attached to Vijay under the Centre's Y-category, sanctioned in February.
At the time, critics of the BJP and Vijay called it a political favour by the Centre, to woo the latter. Now after Karur, questions arise about the presence or absence of the CRPF's personal security officer assigned to Vijay under the Y-Category security, and the perimeter security whenever he travelled.
Going by video footage on Vijay's multiple outings, whether on political work or film shooting since the CRPF was deployed, no uniformed PSO was seen by his side. This raises avoidable questions, and possible embarrassment, it would seem.
In the midst of it all, Vijay fans and fans-turned-cadres are setting their sights on January 9, when his next, and possibly last film, Jana Nayagan, or, 'People's Hero', is scheduled for a world-wide release.
Vijay, who is among the highest-paid film stars in the country, plays a good cop one more time, again with a personal touch of virtue combining with valour and possibly a lot of violence as in his earlier movies.
A box-office success, it is now hoped, will help divert people's attention away from Karur.
The other argument is that Karur could still impact Jana Nayagan's box-office success if Vijay and the TVK do not get their act together, here and now -- and demonstrate that they are serious players in politics, responsible and accountable for their acts of commission and omission, and are much more than a film star and his fans.
N Sathiya Moorthy, veteran journalist and author, is a Chennai-based policy analyst and political commentator.
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