Nashik Mayor Ashok Dive announced recently that the foundation stone would be laid on October 1. Which led the Republican Party of India (RPI) -- which in turn has been opposing the project at the foothill of the `Pandav Leni' since 1993 -- to intensify its agitation by launching a series of agitations, beginning with a morcha on September 23.

The Phalke memorial project was slated to come up in 1990 at the foothills of the Pandav caves, about eight km from the city on the Mumbai-Agra national highway. However, with the caves having been declared a national monument, the Archaeological Society of India refused permission to construct any building nearby. The project was then scaled down to exclude multi-storeyed structures.

Subsequently, the state government handed over 11.75 hectares of land to the NashikMunicipal Corporation (NMC).

The NMC, then sought the help of the film industry for the project, which envisaged the creation of a memorial, a museum, a mini-theatre, a library, an exhibition hall and an amusement park at a total cost of Rs 1.5 crore. The plea however failed to elicit a response.

The NMC finally decided to complete the task on its own. Plans and designs were invited for scrutiny, but the selection of a particular group of architects group led to litigation, further delaying the project.

Then in 1993, the RPI launched an agitation against the project on grounds that the Pandav caves were actually Buddhist carvings which should be renamed `Trirashmi Leni'. The memorial project would affect their sanctity, the party maintained and demanded that land for a Buddhist memorial be provided at the site.

Last year, the NMC decided to hand over a plot of land to the RPI for the Buddhist memorial. The cost of the Phalke project, meanwhile, almost doubled.

When RPI corporator Ashok Dive waselected Mayor in March this year on the support of the ruling Shiv Sena-BJP, he promised to kick-start the project. However, with a section of the RPI which is pro-Congress, still opposing the plan, the memorial is unlikely to come up in a hurry.