Nashik, Mar 7 (NDTV): It's a cause-and-effect routine that has become standard for activist Trupti Desai. The police barricaded roads in anticipation of her arrival this afternoon at a famous temple town near Nashik in Maharashtra.

Ms Desai, 31, is accompanied by more than a hundred women who want to enter the core or inner sanctum of a temple dedicated to Lord Shiva on the occasion of Mahashivratri, one of the most important occasions in the Hindu calendar. Like some other temples, women are not allowed into the inner chambers.

Last month, Ms Desai was blocked in a similar fashion on the road to the Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar, dedicated to Lord Shani or Saturn. The locals who formed a human chain to keep the activist and her companions out included several hundred women villagers, who said they wanted to protect a centuries-old tradition that blocks access to women, a decision recently endorsed by the temple's officials.

Ms Desai, who heads an organization called the Bhumata Brigade, had warned that she might grapple into the temple from a helicopter, a prospect that was quickly banned by the police by refusing flying permission to the chopper.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said that state officials can facilitate talks between the activists and temple authorities.

"Indian culture and the Hindu religion have always given women the right to worship," Mr Fadnavis had tweeted. "A change in tradition in accordance with the times is our culture. Discrimination in worshipping is not our culture," he had posted.

The popular Sabarimala Ayyappa temple in Kerala, which denies entry to women of reproductive age, is the subject of a petition in the Supreme Court, which has asked temple authorities to explain why they forbid women entry.