CHENNAI: The political bickering over the Karur stampede echoed in the Tamil Nadu Assembly on Wednesday, with Chief Minister MK Stalin blaming actor-politician Vijay’s late arrival for his party’s (Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam) meeting on September 27 at Velusamypuram for the death of 41 people. Opposition parties—AIADMK and BJP—staged a walkout against the CM’s statement.
Mounting a strong defence of the government’s actions on the issue, the CM said, “The TVK founder came seven hours late for the meeting. The organisers did not make any arrangements to provide water, food, or other basic amenities for the waiting crowd nor did they heed to the police’s request to have his (Vijay’s) address advanced to enable the people to disperse.”
The TVK organisers also ignored the police’s request to stop Vijay’s vehicle just a few metres ahead of the crowd, the CM charged. “When the vehicle moved around 30-35 metres beyond Akshaya Hospital, the dense crowd on either side began to sway, causing a wave-like commotion.
Panic, suffocation, fainting, and chaos followed, especially among women and children, with many falling and being trampled,” the CM said, without taking Vijay’s name.
Not our intention to blame anyone but it’s our duty to clarify the facts: Stalin
Later in the day, the CM, in a tweet, said, “It is not our intention to blame anyone. But when some people deliberately spread falsehoods against the government, it becomes our duty to clarify the facts.”
The CM said the TVK’s requests to conduct the meeting at several other venues were denied owing to concerns over traffic congestion and due to safety reasons. The permission to conduct meeting at Velusamypuram was approved with 11 conditions, he pointed out in the Assembly.
The CM said as many as 606 police personnel, including one SP, 3 ASPs, 6 DSPs, 20 inspectors, 83 SIs and armed police personnel were deployed for the TVK meeting. This is significantly higher than the usual deployment for political meetings, he pointed out.
Stalin noted that the organisers had stated that 10,000 people would attend the event, but the turnout was much higher. Although the meeting was scheduled for 3 pm, the party’s announcement that its leader would arrive at noon led to early crowd arrival, but he (Vijay) arrived only at 7pm, the CM said.
Stalin also recalled that just two days before the TVK meeting, Leader of the Opposition, Edappadi K Palaniswami, had conducted a campaign meeting at the same venue on September 25, he added. Clarifying on the allegations of power cut, the CM said, “Some people tried to escape by entering the generator enclosure and removing the tin sheets to find a way out of the crowd. To prevent electrocution, the generator operator had cut off the power supply.”
Clearing the air on overnight postmortem of stampede victims, the CM said, “Since the mortuary lacked sufficient cold storage space, special permission was obtained from the District Collector to conduct postmortems overnight.
A team of 24 doctors and 16 assistants, led by Dr Sankar, Professor of Forensic Medicine, performed the autopsies. The first postmortem began at 1.45 am on September 28, and the 39th concluded at 1.10 pm that afternoon, he said.
