Preventable tragedies at Karur and Bengaluru highlight systemic failures in crowd management, administrative oversight, and safety protocols. Urgent reforms, accountability, and adoption of technology like AI are essential to protect citizens during mass gatherings and political rallies
The images from Karur, of anguished families and the leftover chappals scattered at the TVK rally site, will forever remain etched in my memory. What unfolded at the TVK rally on 27 September was a preventable human tragedy. As a member of the eight-member National Democratic Alliance (NDA) fact-finding committee constituted by our national president J.P. Nadda, I witnessed first-hand the devastating consequences of administrative negligence, intelligence failure, and complete disregard for basic crowd safety protocols. Forty-one innocent lives, including 18 women and 10 children, were lost in what has become the biggest stampede in the history of India’s political rallies. This stampede, which claimed dozens of lives and injured many more, was not just a local calamity; it leaves an indelible national scar that demands sober, systemic answers.
The delegation included my colleagues from different states and parties and both Houses of Parliament; our objective was to seek to know the cause of such a ghastly incident, clarity on how it happened, accountability, and the possible steps to reform the rules of such rallies so that such a tragedy never repeats. When our delegation, led by senior MP Hema Malini and comprising representatives from the BJP, Shiv Sena, and TDP, reached Karur, we expected to find answers. Instead, what we encountered was a wall of bureaucratic silence and disturbing revelations. The district administration’s refusal to engage with our delegation was unprecedented and deeply troubling. In all my years in public service, I have never seen such brazen avoidance of accountability. We travelled to Karur to listen to the injured, the bereaved, the first responders, and officials, and to understand what went wrong.
Our interactions with the bereaved families, the injured victims, and the eyewitnesses painted a horrific picture of systemic failure. One eyewitness told us that the venue, a narrow public road, was merely 19 feet wide, while the actor-turned-politician Vijay’s campaign vehicle itself measured 12 feet, leaving virtually no space for the 30,000-strong crowd to move or escape. The mathematics of disaster were evident, yet permissions were granted without any regard for basic safety norms. It was a site waiting for a disaster of such magnitude. The dynamics of crowd surge, the crowd density, progressive collapse of the crowd due to crush, crowd behaviour psychology, ingress and egress flow rate, and the surge at the time the actor Vijay entered the spot, and other such dynamics of crowd management and intelligence seem to have been ignored altogether while allowing such a rally.
The sight of grieving families at the hospital in Karur haunts me. These were not political workers or party activists. They were ordinary citizens, including children, seemingly fans of the actor, who came with curiosity just to witness a celebrity-turned-politician.
Eyewitnesses recalled disruption to power at a critical moment, which aggravated panic. Our delegation sought a clear explanation about why power was switched off and upon whose order. Serious concerns were raised about crowd control measures, the inadequacy and positioning of police and marshals, and the preparedness of medical first response at the venue.
It is necessary to place the Karur incident in a broader national context. On 4 June 2025, Bengaluru witnessed a separate but strikingly similar crowd disaster during public celebrations outside the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium after Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s IPL win: eleven people were killed and many more injured as crowds surged and entry gates became sites of crushing and chaos. Official responses to that incident again exposed the same fault lines and contested narratives that emphasised organiser culpability while minimising institutional, policing, and intelligence gaps. The Karnataka government’s status report placed significant responsibility on the RCB franchise and event organisers for proceeding in ways that left police and civic agencies little time to prepare, while the reporting and independent observers underlined police planning failures, late or inadequate permissions, and the absence of a coherent on-ground SOP. The Bengaluru episode is therefore not an isolated sporting accident but another example of how large crowds + poor planning + weak real-time intelligence invariably result in catastrophe.
A worrying commonality in both Karur and Bengaluru is the tendency of inquiries and public narratives to place the blame narrowly at the doors of the organisers while underplaying or sidelining the role of state institutions that plan, permit, police, and provide intelligence. In both cases, official lines and subsequent FIRs created an impression that the tragedy was primarily the organisers’ fault, even as evidence and reporting highlighted severe gaps in police and administrative preparedness, delayed permissions or last-minute changes, and chaotic on-the-ground decision-making by civic agencies. That rush to single out organisers foreclosed hard questions about state capacity, accountability, and the intelligence and crowd management systems that should have prevented mass casualties.
As public representatives, we have a constitutional duty to ensure that the right to peaceful assembly under Article 19(1)(b) does not turn into a death sentence for citizens. We raised pointed questions on intelligence and administrative preparedness: whether the Intelligence Department anticipated the expected crowd size; whether any real-time assessments were made for taking subsequent decisions as the crowd numbers swelled. We sought clarity on the specific steps taken by the police and local administration once congestion and cases of fainting began. We further questioned why the choice of this venue and route that led to dangerous bottlenecks was made; how crowd flows were managed, and whether the actions of the organisers aggravated risks, including disturbing accounts from the injured that water bottles were thrown into densely packed sections amid distress.
The National Disaster Management Authority’s guidelines on Managing Crowd at Events and Venues of Mass Gathering lay out a detailed, practical framework for preventing precisely these failures: mandatory crowd estimation and capacity assessment, pre-event risk audits, clear circulation plans with multiple entry/exit points and buffer zones, listed responsibilities for organisers and authorities, integrated command and control centres, real-time monitoring (CCTV, drones), medical and evacuation planning, communications protocols, rehearsed SOPs, and after-action reporting. The guide emphasises shared responsibility — organisers, municipal agencies, police, and disaster management authorities must jointly certify readiness before any large public event goes ahead. These are not optional checkboxes; they are lifesaving systems. All of these were utterly neglected at the spot.
From this tragedy, critical lessons must guide every future political rally. First, mandatory crowd estimation audits should be enforced, and parties must submit realistic projections, and the police must review and adjust these against their own intelligence mechanisms, ground conditions, and call in reinforcements without losing critical time where necessary. Second, venue safety must be hardened through appropriate and effective barricading, provision of multiple entry and exit points, and the use of elevated platforms secure from potential hazards.
Third, real-time monitoring should be institutionalised, using drones, CCTV networks, and dedicated control rooms empowered to escalate interventions before panic takes hold. Fourth, medical preparedness must go beyond ambulances, with on-site medical teams and prior drills for emergency scenarios. Fifth, it is the time of Artificial Intelligence, and AI must be used as an effective tool of technology for predicting possible crowd numbers, studying crowd density across the venue, crowd surge patterns, ingress and egress or static flow and pressure points, etc., in order to manage and avert such a tragedy. Finally, shared responsibility is essential: organisers, administrators, and local authorities must internalise the NDMA guidelines on “Managing Crowd at Events and Venues of Mass Gathering”, ensuring standardisation of safety measures and making compliance non-negotiable.
As we compile our report to Hon’ble BJP President J.P. Nadda ji, one demand stands firm: a sitting Supreme Court judge monitoring the probe. Something feels amiss in the official narrative, the approvals, the delayed reinforcements, and only an impartial scrutiny can affirm and expose it. Chief Minister Stalin’s move to appoint a personally handpicked retired judge to probe the Karur stampede undermines credibility, raising doubts about impartiality and shielding the administration from real accountability. This move by Stalin eerily mirrors the move by the Karnataka government’s handpicked retired judge enquiry that ultimately put all blame on organisers and none on the state apparatus.
In Karur, I saw not division, but unity in pain. An NDA team consoling families affected at a TVK rally speaks to our shared stake in democracy. The people of Karur have suffered an avoidable calamity. The response must ensure medical care, swift compensation, rehabilitation and support for the bereaved families, which, in some cases, have lost the prime or sole breadwinners, and our second point of focus must be systemic reforms that will prevent such tragedies in future. I left Karur with the faces of those we met forever etched on my mind and with a determination that their loss should spur real and enduring change.
If there is any single lesson to be learnt from the Karur and Bengaluru incidents, then it is this: the energy of democracy-crowds, rallies, processions — must be matched by equally vigorous systems to protect those who pour into our public spaces. Anything less is a failure of governance and a moral failure towards the citizens we serve.
The writer is the former Union Minister and Member of Parliament
