“Classical Tamil meet in State once in five years”

The World Classical Tamil Conference (WCTC) will be held in the State once in five years, according to Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi.

Scholars, who took part in the first WCTC here, wanted it to be held in Tamil Nadu at least once in five years. “This has been accepted,” the Chief Minister told reporters here on Monday.

He said that it would not be possible to hold the meet in the State every time. It should be held wherever Tamils were living in large numbers.

Giving an account of the scale of participation in the conference, he said 913 papers on 55 subjects were presented. Of the total number of papers, 152 were submitted by foreign delegates. There were 2,605 delegates, including 840 foreigners.

About 1.7 lakh people visited the general exhibition in the last four days. The exhibition will be open till July 4. The WCTC souvenir contained 129 articles and 34 poems.

Around 1.5 lakh people witnessed various events at the conference complex every day. About five lakh people watched the pageantry taken out on the inaugural day. The Rs.30-meal was provided to four lakh people.

As for the Tamil Internet Conference (TIC) that was held concurrently, there were 500 participants and 110 papers presented. Over one lakh people visited the Internet Exhibition. The TIC souvenir had 130 articles.

Noting that Rs.68.5 crore was spent on organising the WCTC, the Chief Minister said a sum of Rs.243 crore was set apart for infrastructure development in and around the city.

Asked about the offer made by the Thiruvananthapuram-based International Institute of Dravidian Linguistics to translate Tamil literary works to other Dravidian languages, Mr. Karunanidhi said, “I welcome it.”

To a question whether legislation would be enacted in the next session of the Assembly to give preference in government jobs to those who pursued Tamil studies, the Chief Minister hinted at such a possibility.