KARUR: Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay, who is visiting Karur on Friday, will hand over appointment order for government jobs to 32 members of the families of 41 people who died in the stampede during TVK rally in September 2025. The programme at the district collectorate is scheduled to begin around 3 pm.
Apart from this, the chief minister will lay the foundation stone for a non-leather footwear manufacturing factory to be set up by Evervan Kothari Footwear Private Limited, at Manavasi village in Krishnarayapuram. The project, estimated to cost Rs 1,700 crore, is expected to generate employment for around 13,500 people, officials said.
Earlier in the day, the chief minister will attend Makkal Santhippu programme where he will meet TVK cadre and the families of the stampede victims. The programme will be held at the grounds of a private college along the Karur-Salem Highway and is scheduled to begin around 11 am. A large pandal has been erected to accommodate around 5,000 people. G Dharmarajan, DIG of Intelligence (Security) reviewed the arrangements on Thursday.
Vijay last visited Karur in September 2025 to address a TVK election rally at Velusamypuram, which ended in tragedy following the stampede. Apart from the Rs 10 lakh solatium announced to each of the families of the victims by the then DMK government, Vijay gave Rs 20 lakh to each bereaved family. He also met the victims’ families at a hotel near Chennai in October, 2025.
BJP welcomes it, but questions timing
Tirunelveli: TN BJP chief Nainar Nagenthran on Thursday welcomed the TVK government’s decision to offer jobs to the victims’ kin but criticised the CM for the timing of the gesture. Nainar said Vijay should have stayed in Karur and consoled the families of the 41 victims on the day of the tragedy itself. He was addressing the media on Thursday.
When asked about VCK leader Thol Thirumavalavan’s call for the union of the TVK and the DMK at the national level against the BJP, Nagenthran said that the BJP would emerge victorious in the 2029 polls also and that Narendra Modi would again become PM.
“Now, there is no DMK in the INDIA bloc. The TMC too is not fully in it. The TVK has formed an alliance with the Congress, which has been betraying Tamils on many issues, including Katchatheevu and Cauvery water disputes. The PM need not intervene in the Mekedatu Dam dispute. CM Vijay can ask his ministers from the Congress to speak with their party’s Karnataka CM D K Shivakumar,” he said.
