Chennai, Oct. 14: The Tamil Nadu government has decided to initiate legal action against ADMK leader Jayalalithaa for having allegedly “hatched a conspiracy to finish off” the DMK top brass.

“We have intelligence reports to the effect that there was a plot to kill the DMK’s frontline leaders,” chief minister M. Karunanidhi told a news conference this evening. “We will initiate criminal prosecution against Ms. Jayalalithaa for it.”

Karunanidhi said the government’s move comes in the wake of Jayalalithaa’s statement while campaigning for the recent local body polls that people would soon do a “Narakasura vatham” to the DMK’s top brass. The former chief minister was alluding to the people slaying the mythological demon Narakasura.

Denying Jayalalithaa’s charge that the violence, intimidation and booth-capturing in the Chennai municipal corporation elections yesterday was instigated by the DMK and its “goons”, Karunanidhi said it was the Opposition ADMK that was responsible as it had indulged in similar violence during the 2001 polls.

Karunanidhi claimed there were fewer untoward incidents yesterday than the last civic elections. The votes polled then were 36 per cent compared to 53 per cent yesterday, he said.

Karunanidhi parried queries on the CPM, one of the DMK’s allies, accusing his party of violence and booth-capturing. But he admitted that some stray incidents did take place. “We will sort this out with the Marxists and the CPI,” he said.

Karunanidhi also displayed photographs of injured DMK activists under treatment in various hospitals and read out a list of party workers attacked in violence “provoked by the ADMK yesterday”.

On MDMK leader Vaiko suspecting that the DMK’s youth wing leader, M.K. Stalin, was behind the violence and booth-capturing yesterday, Karunanidhi said: “I do not know who he (Vaiko) is.”