AHMEDNAGAR:  After voting for their cause, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today met women activists who were stopped yesterday from entering the Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar about 160 km from Pune.

“The Chief Minister has said he will support us. He has supported our movement. I request the government to act as soon as possible. Similar rules across the country should be done away with,” Trupti Desai, who had led the 500-strong women protesters yesterday, said after her meeting of a few seconds with Mr Fadnavis in Pune.

“We had called him on phone and he said he would meet us,” said Ms Desai, apparently pleased with the outcome.

Ms Desai’s Bhumata Brigade is demanding an end to a centuries-old ban on women’s entry into the inner-most part of the temple, where the idol of Lord Shani is placed on an open-air platform.

The women activists were trying to force their way into the temple on Tuesday, when they were physically blocked by nearly 1,000 villagers and the local police.

On Tuesday evening, Mr Fadnavis had tweeted, “Indian culture and Hindu religion gives women the right to pray. A change in yesterday’s traditions is our culture. Discrimination in praying is not in our culture. The temple authorities should resolve the issue through a dialogue.”

The tweet opened the doors for talks, with members of the board that runs the temple saying they were ready “for a dialogue”. But they were conspicuously silent on Mr Fadnavis’ support for women’s right to pray at the temple.

The chief minister’s stand also makes for some complicated politics. Some members of women’s wing of the Shiv Sena, the BJP’s ally in the state, had blocked the women activists from proceeding to the temple, though the Sena has not yet officially taken a stand.

On Tuesday, huge crowds and the police blocked the women about 40 km from the temple. Some of the activists lay on the ground protesting. They were detained and later released and sent back to Pune.