Maharashtra is home to hundreds of statues of Shivaji and this has not stopped political parties from announcing that more would be built.

This is why the plan to build a Shivaji Maharaj memorial in the Arabian Sea, off the coast of Mumbai, by the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance government in 2004, is still an election issue in the state.

Although the proposal hasn’t seen much progress since then, parties are making it an issue ahead of the election. The proposal was taken up by successive governments of the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena, the MVA administration of the current Shiv Sena (UBT)-Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (SP), and the Shiv Sena, BJP-NCP. In 2016, Modi played bhoomi pujan (earth worship) for a memorial to Maharashtra icon Chhatrapati Shivaji in the Arabian Sea.

Millions of dollars have been spent on this project, which has not yet seen the light of day. According to a PTI reportThe construction of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj statue in the Arabian Sea off the Mumbai coast would cost the exchequer Rs 3,643.78 crore and the construction of all aspects of the project was expected to be completed by 2022-23. It was 2018!

Fast forward to 2024, as Maharashtra approaches elections on October 6, Sambhajiraje Chhatrapati, a descendant of Shivaji, who is also the head of his own political group ‘Maharashtra Swarajya Paksh’, I took a boat trip at this site where PM Modi performed Jal Pooja eight years ago to inspect the progress.

“On December 24, 2016, Prime Minister Modi performed the jal-poojan but it (the statue of Shivaji Maharaj) did not see the light of day. There is a (BJP) government at the Center and in Maharashtra but it has always failed,” Raje said after inspecting the site.

But this is not the only Shivaji memorial promised. There are several, including Uddhav Thackeray’s promise to build a shivaji temple in each district if elected to power. Rahul Gandhi, October 4 unveiled the statue of the famous Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj at Kasaba Bawada in Kolhapur. The Maharashtra government has launched a call for tenders for the construction of a new 60-foot-tall statue, almost twice the size of the previous one.

The erection of statues has over the years become the norm in Indian politics as a symbol of loyalty to the people of the region. For Maharashtra, the fall of the statutes and the unveiling of new statues of Shivaji remains a central issue at least till the conclusion of the elections.