Eighty years, same six feet, same spot.

The idol devotees call 'Bhopal Ke Raja' has been installed at Peepal Chowk in the Old City every year since 1947, and this year the tradition itself turns 80 alongside the country. The Shri Dol Gyaras Samiti, founded by Brijbhushan Goyal, Uddhavdas Mehta and Mohanlal Simhal, has kept the ritual going without a break, even through the years when open celebration wasn't an option.

"Now the third and fourth generations of the founders are managing the things. But the tradition remains unbroken," Deepak Goyal, the Samiti's patron, told the Free Press Journal.

Back when the city was under Nawabi rule, public festival celebrations weren't allowed. So for the first two years, in 1947 and 1948, the idol sat inside a shop instead of out in the open. It was only from 1949 that the Samiti moved the celebration into public view at Peepal Chowk, where it has stayed put ever since.

Goyal says nothing about the format has changed in eight decades. The idol height stays at six feet, the same as always, and goddesses Riddhi-Siddhi along with Ganesha's sons Shubh-Labh are installed alongside him. Fresh flowers get changed daily and 'Chappan Bhog' is offered as prasad. This year's budget for the whole affair comes to roughly Rs 15 lakh, according to Goyal.

That consistency is what sets Bhopal Ke Raja apart from the rest of the city's pandals, which tend to go bigger and more elaborate each year.

Over in New Market, organisers have built a full replica of Pune's Shrimant Dagdusheth Halwai Ganpati temple as this year's centrepiece, housing a 13-foot idol of Lord Gan Gajanand inside a 3,000-square-foot pandal. Ranjeet Manjhi, who's coordinating the New Market Ganesh Utsav Samiti, put this year's spend at around Rs 10 lakh.

Elsewhere in the city, the scale keeps climbing. Mata Mandir gets a 17-foot Ganesha this year, while Chandbad's idol holds a Chakra in one hand. Somwara's Ganesha rides a Nandi at 12 feet, and Sindhi Colony has gone with a Simhastha theme altogether, building out a pandal around Mahakal and the Kshipra river.

Hundreds of pandals opened their doors across Bhopal on Monday, the first of ten days of Ganesh Utsav. For the Shri Dol Gyaras Samiti, the plan is simple: do exactly what they did last year, and the year before that, and every year going back to a shopfront installation in 1947. The idol comes down, as it always does, at the end of the ten days. What doesn't come down, eight decades on, is the Samiti running it.