By Kavita Mistry 
After 15 days of despair, TVK leader Vijay found hope on Monday. For, Supreme Court ordered a CBI inquiry into the Karur stampede that killed 41 people at his roadshow in Karur, Tamil Nadu, on September 27.
Hearing several petitions on Friday, the apex court had asked why a single-judge bench of Madras high court ordered an inquiry by a special investigation team when a division bench of the Madurai bench of the same high court had taken cognizance of the matter. It also wondered how the govt ensured that postmortem was conducted on all the 41 bodies within five hours.
Vijay, however, is still at a crossroads. The Supreme Court has upped his stakes, yet he should make an important decision soon: Should TVK align with AIADMK. Since the launch of TVK, a group within has been pushing for this alliance. Their theory: The party should get power on its debut, or it may not be able to sustain itself. And AIADMK, on which Vijay has been soft while attacking DMK and BJP, is the only choice for an alliance. The hitch was who – Vijay or AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami – would be the chief minister candidate. Neither would agree to play the second fiddle, even if they had to share the tenure.
With EPS opening his arms again to Vijay in the aftermath of the Karur tragedy, the proposition for an alliance is back on the TVK table. Seat-sharing and the CM post would continue to be stumbling blocks for a possible marriage of convenience, but what could make the decision more difficult for Vijay is AIADMK’s tie-up with BJP – after all, they call it NDA. Opportunism is part and parcel of politics (if you don’t trust me, ask Kamal Haasan), but having sworn BJP as his ideological enemy while launching TVK, joining NDA would mean Vijay being opportunistic too early into his political career.
What if BJP, in its insuppressible urge to defeat DMK “at any cost”, makes a tactical exit from the AIADMK alliance to make space for TVK? The saffron party would gain nothing for itself from this arrangement other than getting vengeful self-gratification of making things difficult for DMK. Highly hypothetical this may sound, but in the event of such a reconfiguration of the opposition, Vijay will have one reason less not to join hands with AIADMK.
But should Vijay yield to that temptation? Let me reproduce what I wrote in this column in November last year: Vijay, 50, has age by his side. Fighting the 2026 assembly election alone – or with some smaller players who are willing to rally behind him – will help him test his real strength. If TVK gets more than 10% votes, anyone would consider him as much a potential ally as a worthy opponent. Whether he wins a seat or not, he can invest the next five years in building political heft by attracting some political veterans and promising youngsters who can form a critical core of the party which now has no big name beyond himself. If Vijay is here for the long run, he shouldn’t be an also-ran.
Would I change anything from that paragraph written almost a year ago? Well, just one thing: his age.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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