Trupti Desai had earlier led a group of women activists to Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar district
The Pune-based women's rights activist Trupti Desai on Wednesday said she plans to offer prayers at Sabarimala temple on November 17, the day the hill shrine opens for the two-month annual pilgrim season.
Ms Desai, founder of the Bhumata Brigade, an organisation that fights for women's rights said she has written to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and state police chief about her plans to visit the shrine, seeking police protection during her visit to the state.
"I have written to Kerala Chief Minister and Director General of Police, informing them that we plan darshan at Sabarimala on November 17," the activist told NDTV.
In 2016, Trupti Desai had led a group of women activists to Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar in Maharashtra that ended a 60-year tradition of women not being allowed to enter the shrine. Her movement inspired similar campaigns demanding entry for women in temples where they had been banned.
Ms Desai in her letter to the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said she along "with six other women would be arriving in Kerala on Friday" for a visit at the temple. She sought police protection "right from the time she lands in Kerala till they leave the state." "We will visit the temple whatever be the resistance," she said.
Shortly after her announcement Rahul Eashwar, an activist who has been protesting against the entry of women of all ages to the temple, said no woman will be allowed to inside the shrine.
"We will lie down before the women who come to break the temple's tradition."
The Supreme Court today refused to stay its early order that had allowed women of all ages to offer prayers at Sabarimala. The top court will hear a clutch of petitions seeking a review of its ruling on January 22.
No woman has entered the Sabarimala temple since the historic September order of Supreme Court as devotees have launched a massive protest against doing away with the decades-old tradition of banning women of menstruating age from the shrine.