A war of words has broken out on social media, with DMK cadres launching a scathing "satirical" campaign against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay over his Karur public meeting.
In a sharp wave of digital protest on X, opposition party functionaries have taken aim at the CM's Thursday announcement of a memorial for the Karur stampede victims, flooding timelines with mocking graphic designs of their own.
In his first visit here since the 2025 stampede that killed 41 people, Vijay faulted the police for failing to alert him about the swelling crowd at the venue on September 27, and for not taking steps to call off the meeting once the crowd had spiralled out of control.
Vijay could not meet the affected families in Karur last year, but when they were brought to Chennai, he met and consoled them.
“Instead of standing by the grieving families or offering a word of solace, Vijay fled the scene to escape public anger,” alleged one viral post.
“If we were to build a monument in Karur to commemorate his 'public relations craze' and his subsequent vanishing act, it should look like a running track,” another post quipped.
While Vijay announced official compensation and a TVK-backed memorial for the victims, the DMK's youth and IT wings wasted no time pouncing on the incident, turning it into fresh ammunition for a social media offensive.
"For the sake of his advertisement craze in Karur, he gathered a massive crowd, arrived intentionally late, and caused a tragic accident," DMK cadres claimed in a post that quickly went viral.
"Even then, without standing by the affected or offering a single word of comfort, #RunnerVijay (Ottanayagan) fled the spot in panic," it added.
"If a monument were built in Karur to remember this, what would it look like? Let your creative minds run wild in the comments, and share your designs with the hashtag," the post further alleged.