The September 27 Karur stampede, which claimed 41 lives at actor-politician Vijay's TVK rally, rocked the Tamil Nadu Assembly on Wednesday and the main opposition AIADMK staged a walkout.
As Chief Minister MK Stalin rose to make a statement on the issue, the opposition party leader Edappadi K Palaniswami stood up, urging Speaker Appavu to allow him to speak first.
AIADMK members protested, demanding that their party leader be allowed to speak. Later, the opposition MLAs staged a walkout from the assembly.
Addressing reporters outside the Assembly, Palaniswami claimed that the Karur stampede was unprecedented for any political rally in India.
Flanked by party colleagues at the Secretariat, he accused the state government of "staging a drama to cover up the incident."
Recounting the events inside the House earlier in the day, the former chief minister said he sought permission from the Speaker to make a statement on the stampede.
"I argued with the Speaker that AIADMK is the main opposition party in the Assembly and the party members should be allowed to speak first. Despite my request, the Speaker permitted him (Stalin) to speak first," he said.
Palaniswami said the party MLAs then decided to listen to the Chief Minister's address, which outlined the government's response to the stampede.
Blaming the DMK government and the police for "negligence", the AIADMK chief said adequate security could have prevented the loss of lives.
Accusing the DMK of "double standards", he said, "There are different rules for the ruling party and the opposition party."
"I am not mentioning anything new. I have just told whatever took place (on September 27)," he said, citing media reports.
Palaniswami claimed that previous rallies of the TVK in Tiruchi, Ariyalur, Nagapattinam, Tiruvarur, and Namakkal, were denied the location requested by the Vijay-led party.
Disputing government claims of deploying 650 personnel to manage the crowd at Velusamypuram in Karur for the TVK rally, Palaniswami pointed out that ADGP S Davidson Devasirvatham had reported only 500 of them.
"...there is a contradiction in the number of police personnel deployed, which gives rise to doubts about the handling of the incident," he said.
Soon after the incident on September 28, Devasirvatham had informed the media that about 500 police personnel were deployed for security at the rally in Karur.
(With inputs from PTI)
