'Vijay Just Fled The Scene'

'Vijay should have stayed there for the night and in the morning he should have met the people.'

Tamil movie superstar Vijay could not have expected the script to go so wrong for his political debut.

His pre-election rallies have been drawing mammoth crowds, and the campaign in Karur on Saturday, September 27, 2025, night was expected to go along similar lines.

But neither he nor his party the Tamizhaga Vettri Kazhagam, had factored in the flipside to huge crowds gathering at one spot -- stampede.

In the melee that overtook his Karur rally some 40 people had been killed and many more were injured.

Vijay was forced to postpone his political outreach and has since returned to Chennai.

Could the tragedy have been avoided? What should Vijay have done to prevent it?

A senior media professional, who was in Karur to cover the event, spoke to Saisuresh Sivaswamy/Rediff on how the stampede can scuttle Vijay's political prospects.

Can you describe what happened in Karur on Saturday night?

Nobody is able to understand clearly what happened, they are not in a position to comment on what happened, like there is complete disbelief because they were celebrating and rejoicing till evening and within 2-3 hours everything changed actually.

So, they are not finding anyone to blame, but they are also not finding anyone to take responsibility, they are just mourning. People are just mourning.

But people with a political background, they are raising some valid questions like why it took so much time for this actor to reach the venue. Because, he was supposed to complete it before 2 pm, but he came there by around 7 pm.

So for 6, 7 hours people have been waiting there, and shops over there had already closed. Nothing was there. So what happened was that people didn't have enough water, they didn't take food, and were still waiting for him to come.

They started to faint one after another. They lost whatever they had, everything was lost in that 5-6 hours.

The problem is beyond this crowd, in the particular area where people waited, there was another batch of crowds that was coming to the venue.

Altogether the road is wide enough to handle four lanes, the road where the venue is located is a four-lane road with a central median. We cannot say that is a narrow road, actually. It is a state-run highway connecting Erode and Karur districts. It is a very busy highway, actually. A developing area, on the outskirts of the core Karur city.

Questions are being raised as to why it took so much time for Vijay. The police was there, the police first couldn't do anything because the crowds must have been well above 30,000 strong, up to 50,000, although estimates say there were 70,000-80,000 people but they are not sure what the numbers were.

But they expected only around 10,000 to 15,000 people to turn up. But the number was almost two- or three-fold over what was expected.

Karur is a kind of landlocked city. It is completely surrounded by several districts, and is an industrial area. They are not accustomed to these star shows and frenzied crowds. So they took the opportunity to have some fun, some of them had come on weekend leave also. They didn't expect it.

Even TVK also, they didn't expect this. This was the situation in all his campaigns, whether Trichy, Nagapattinam, so they didn't expect it to go south like this in Karur.

Could the tragedy have been prevented?

Certainly. I am not sure whether TVK is taking inputs from the local people, local functionaries. Because they would have been in a better position to assess what could be done because these people who are coming from Chennai may not know if this road can accommodate these many people. Something should have been done there.

The second level leaders should have apprised Vijay to complete the campaign as early as possible. It took so long for him to reach the venue from Karur town itself. Someone should have told him the situation is going out of control. In their best interests he should complete it as soon as possible. But that didn't happen.

AIADMK leader Edappadi K Palaniswami says the police is to blame. True?

Naturally as an Opposition leader he has blamed the police, saying they are behaving in a biased manner by allotting venues and time for political parties and ruling alliance against the Opposition. He also says not adequate police was there.

We cannot say adequate police was not there because there were at least 30,000 people, what number could be adequate for them?

Nobody is listening to what the people have been advised to do, they were told that they should not climb tall buildings and trees, but no one is listening.

Even ambulances were stopped and drivers were roughed up. People were in a total frenzy there. They were just celebrating and enjoying the event and didn't expect it would go this way.

Is Vijay to be blamed? Is there any cause for it?

Definitely. He was the one reason why so many people gathered there. There is no reason for them to align politically or electorally. They wanted to see him, that's all. It was the reason why people were there.

Of course he has to take the blame. He should have stayed there for the night and in the morning he should have met the people or at least have answered the questions of the media.

Instead he just fled the scene, he left for the airport in a rush. Within three hours of the stampede he left Trichy.

What should Vijay do at his future rallies? Will they see such turnout, too?

At least he should have spoken to the media in Trichy in case Karur was not an ideal venue. He should have either apologised instead of putting out a statement on social media.

He could have spoken directly to the people, or the media. Appealed to them, say what was the problem there, what he thinks could have been done to avoid the tragedy.

He has presently postponed all his campaigns. Even if two weeks or one month later also he announces a similar campaign, I don't think people would be scared to attend it. People will still come.

People will forget and will come and he will also plan it, I think. But this is definitely a black spot, I don't think if he will be in a position to take a decision at this moment or in a week. It may take some time.

Will this tragedy affect his political future?

Definitely. People were not aligned with him or against him so far have taken a stand now. They are blaming him, his people and his fans. So there is a kind of aversion for what Vijay's fans are doing. It will certainly affect him.

Vijay's political opponents must be happy over his discomfiture, don't you think?

I won't say they are happy but they are waiting for an opportunity. None of them have openly criticised him except for Seeman of the Naam Tamizhar Katchi. No other party has openly criticised him, not even the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.

They took a soft stand, they don't want to blame anyone now, they are focused on saving the people and giving them solatium. But other parties like the AIADMK have partially blamed him without naming him. Others like the BJP are not doing that also.

The huge turnout at his rallies must be worrying the other parties?

Maybe. But these are not mobilised crowds, these are spontaneous crowds. They are not being brought to the spot in vehicles, mass mobilisation is not happening there. That is not happening.

All of them were spontaneously visiting the place. Most of them, around 20%-25% of them don't have votes, being underage.

To an extent other parties are worried, they all want to showcase their strength, the DMK, AIADMK and others. They don't want to be underestimated in comparison to these crowds. So yes, worrying is happening, other parties are being worried.

Importantly for Vijay, can these numbers at his rallies turn into votes?

That is a very huge doubt because, what we see here in Karur is, not just Karur people are here but people from other districts also have come. So when we say some 5,000 votes across coming together in Karur and one spot, we can't then say in Karur they will get 5,000 votes. The votes are spread actually.

While mobilisation is not happening, people are coming from other districts. That means there is some decent relationship -- not particular to one constituency or one district but people from other constituencies are coming, maybe to an extent it may turn into votes.

Based on my interactions it may turn, but we cannot say for sure that all this crowd, 100% of them, will be converted into votes. We cannot say that.

People outside the state are unable to fathom why Tamil Nadu is so film-star crazy. Do you have an explanation for this phenomenon?

You will have to look back at our history. You see the DMK, AIADMK all of them have some affiliation to the cine industry. Kalaignar Karunanidhi, C N Annadurai, M G Ramachandran, Jayalalithaa -- most of the chief ministers were involved with films.

Even M K Stalin has acted in a few films but he is not a full-fledged actor or cine field guy but other CMs played a huge role as screen writer, actor, so for mobilisation to attract the masses it was a huge tool. Even stage plays, that was also a huge factor.

This is deep-rooted, it was the same with Andhra Pradesh, and to a lesser extent with Karnataka but not with Kerala. Other states may see it as very odd, but here it's usual, it's deep-rooted, and has been happening for almost 75 years.