Also Read: 5-day permission for mandals to use loudspeakers during Ganpati festival, says Shinde

The Thackeray-led government, in 2020, imposed curbs on human pyramids during Gokulashtami citing Covid-appropriate measures. It had also restricted the height of Ganpati idols to four feet for all public mandals and to two feet for household idols. The immersion days see vast congregations of people headed to the seas, and the Thackeray government advocated that smaller statues at public mandals would keep the turnout low on these ‘visarjan’ (immersion) days in keeping with Covid-19 restrictions, and also maintained that smaller statues are less polluting.

However, Shinde well understands the political symbolism that imbues Ganesh Utsav in Maharashtra. After all, it was Lokmanya Balgangadhar Tilak who instituted the first public Ganesh mandal at Girgaum in Mumbai in 1893, and used the 10-day festival to unite the Marathi manoos, and rouse them to rally against the British. Shinde’s political cause may be more personal and rivalrous in nature but his tactics are the same as Tilak’s.

“There will be no restrictions on Ganpati celebrations this year and the government is committed to providing all help to organizers of Ganesh mandals,” he announced in late July. He ordered the administration to repair roads on which large Ganesh processions would pass, and waived the toll for devotees travelling between Konkan and Mumbai.

With the festival season less than a fortnight away, hundreds of makeshift Ganesh workshops have bloomed in Mumbai where artisans are competing to create gigantic idols, ensuring that last year’s miniature versions become a distant memory. Mumbai alone has 12,000 public mandals, and the man who administers all of them is Naresh Dahibhawkar, president of the Brihanmumbai Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav Samanvay Samiti.

“With no restrictions on the height of the idols we will see idols as tall as 26 feet (that’s over two storeys high) this time.” Unlike in the Uddhav government, there are no restrictions this time on Plaster of Paris (POP) idols this time. “Only 20% of the artisans are using natural materials, the rest are using POP. The problem with clay is that those idols cannot exceed 12ft, but this year since we have the freedom, artisans are using POP,” said Dahibhawkar, conceding that environments have been crying hoarse about the polluting effects of POP idols.

In 2020, following a Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) advisory, BMC banned POP idols but in July this year. After Shinde took over as chief minister, BMC rescinded that advisory, insisting that they be immersed in artificial ponds. At the same time, in certain wards, BMC has reduced the number of artificial ponds this year. Shinde himself announced the constitution of a committee to find ecologically sound alternatives to POP but the committee has been given three months to submit its report, well after the Ganesh festival. The POP idols will be banned from next year, promised the Ganpati festival organisers.

Similar exceptions have been made for the dahi-handi groups this year. In 2014, the Bombay high court restricted the height of the human pyramids to 20 feet. But this year, Rajesh Narvekar, district collector of Thane, which is also where CM Shinde lives and has his political base, announced there will be no height restrictions prompting a fierce competition among the various groups to aim higher. In Thane, this is crucial because so far, the festival there has been controlled by Shiv Sena MP Rajan Vichare, one of the few who is still with Uddhav Thackeray.

On Tuesday, chief minister Shinde announced that there all dahi-handi groups will be provided with an insurance cover of ₹10 lakh, the premium for which will be paid by the state government. For two years, dahi-handi was disallowed as it is a contact sport, but now with all restrictions lifted there is great enthusiasm everywhere, said Surendra Panchal, secretary of Maharashtra’s Dahi Handi Samanvay Samiti. Mumbai alone has around 900 dahi-handi groups, including several women-only groups. This year the political parties are vying to offer the highest prize money to the winners of the dahi-handi competition.

The BJP-run Swami Pratishthan has offered prize money of ₹51 lakh to the winning team while Shiv Sena MLA Pratap Sarnaik, who has since defected to the Shinde camp, has offered ₹21 lakh to any team that beats the record held by the men of an organisation he runs, Sanskruti Yuva Pratishthan. The chief minister himself is expected to be the chief guest at the dahi-handi being organised by his son and member of Parliament Shrikant Shinde in Thane this year.

In contrast, the dahi-handi organised by Rajan Vichare, the Uddhav-loyalist, is far more low-key and is yet to declare the prize money they will offer. “We are not allowing pyramids higher than six tier and every participant will get token money,” he said. But Geeta Zhagade, who is president of Parle Sports Club, and has been running women-only dahi handi groups said, “This is a sport, don’t bring politics into it. However, there is only one Sena -- and it belongs to Uddhav Thackeray”.