Barricades are up 24km from Sabarimala ahead of a one-day ritual for which the temple will open on Monday evening, with the state government keen to avoid the kind of clashes witnessed in October when women of childbearing age tried to visit the shrine.

Some 1,200 police are being deployed at the checkpoints and barricades to ensure that only devotees, officials and journalists are allowed -— as opposed to women “activists” looking to prove a point about gender equality.

On September 28, the Supreme Court had lifted the age-old ban on women of the “menstrual age” visiting the temple, citing equality. But mobs of devotees, orthodox groups and Sangh parivar activists prevented the entry of any woman aged 10 to 50, often with a threat of violence, during the five days the shrine opened last month.

Kerala’s Left Front government, which wants to implement the court order, has provided police escorts to under-50 women seeking to visit the temple but refused to use force against the human barricade standing in the way. It has also indicated it does not support “activists” visiting the temple.

The Sree Chathra Atta Thirunal is a 29-hour window, from 5pm on Monday to 10pm on Tuesday, for devotees to worship at the temple.

But the pilgrims will be allowed to cross the barricades — set up 1km ahead of Nilakkal, which is 23km from the temple — only at 8am on Monday as part of the security measures.

Although only a handful of worshippers come during this window, compared with the large crowds during monthly rituals or the main pilgrimage season, the state government is taking no chances.

Sources said a ban on (stationary) assemblies would come into effect from Saturday midnight and last till Tuesday midnight at the temple and nearby Ilavungal, Nilakkal and Pampa.

Cops at the checkpoints have been told to allow in only those carrying the irumudikettu, a bundle of puja ingredients that pilgrims carry on their heads.

“I think the number of devotees would be just a fifth of those who entered the temple for the last monthly puja,” A. Padmakumar, president of the temple’s governing board, told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram. He did not say how many had prayed at the temple in October.

As part of its plan to help women pilgrims, the state government has decided to deploy state transport buses.

Temple board member K.P. Sankaradas told The Telegraph that no private vehicles would be allowed beyond Nilakkal as a precaution.

“The state transport corporation’s air-conditioned electric buses will be ready at all times to ferry pilgrims between Nilakkal and Pampa (from where the devotees trek the 5km to the temple up a hill) at Rs 40 per ticket,” he said.

The arrangement will continue during the main pilgrimage season, which begins on November 16 and ends in mid-January.

Sankaradas said he didn’t expect too many women of childbearing age to exercise their newfound right to enter the temple. “Ninety per cent of traditional believers rooted in this culture won’t go (to the temple) until they turn 50,” he said.

After the October mob violence, some 3,701 people had been arrested for unlawful assembly, destruction of public property and preventing the police from doing their duty.