Criticising the stand taken by his bête noire and AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa regarding the proposed World Classical Tamil Conference, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi said on Wednesday that there was no politics involved in the conduct of the conference as alleged by her.

In a statement in Chennai, he said the decision to host the conference came only after consulting Tamil scholars. The four-day conference, to be held at Coimbatore from June 24 next year, assumes significance as it is being held after the Centre accorded Tamil the classical language status, he said.

Though the previous eight Tamil conferences were held as World Tamil Conference, Tamil scholars and researchers felt it would be pertinent to call it as World Classical Tamil Conference following the Centre granting classical language status to Tamil.

Jayalalithaa had yesterday said her party would boycott the conference organised by the state government as it was not in the series of International Association for Tamil Research's (IATR) 'World Tamil Conference'.

Rejecting Jayalalithaa's charge that the conference did not have the support of IATR, Karunanidhi said six of the nine members from IATR had given their approval.

The DMK Government decided to organise the conference in 2010 as it could not be done in January 2011 as suggested by IATR president and Japanese professor Noburu Kashima, since the state would be busy with the assembly elections due in April-May 2011, he said.

Jayalalithaa's remark came two days after Karunanidhi wrote to all parties in the Assembly, seeking cooperation for the success of the conference, besides requesting them to be part of the organising committees.

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