The demand to confer classical language status on Kannada is under consideration by the government, a Culture Ministry official said.

“A meeting to discuss the demand is likely to be held next month,” the official said, pointing out that only two languages — Tamil and Sanskrit — had so far been declared as classical language in view of their high antiquity and a rich corpus of literature.

The State government and several other organisations have made representations to confer the classical language status to Kannada, advancing the plea that it has rich original literary and grammatical traditions.