The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Police in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar have asked those hotels, dhabas and other shops that sell food that are located along the kanwar yatra route in the district to display the names of their owners and employees to prevent “confusion” among devotees.
Muzaffarnagar superintendent of police Abhishek Singh said the Uttar Pradesh government also asked food carts and stands to comply.
He said the reason behind the decision was to ensure there was “no confusion of any kind among kanwariyas [kanwar yatra pilgrims]” and so that “no situation arises where there are allegations and recriminations and which turns into a law and order situation”.
Hindu pilgrims undertake the kanwar yatra around this time of year, travelling by foot to Uttarakhand to collect water from the Ganga river. They then offer the water in Shiva temples.
This year’s yatra will begin on Monday (July 22).
Earlier this month, Muzaffarnagar’s BJP MLA Kapil Dev Aggarwal said Muslims must not name their shops after Hindu deities during the yatra because “when devotees [kanwariyas] come to know [that the shops they eat at are run by Muslims], it causes controversy,” the Times of India reported.
Ajay Kumar Sahni, deputy inspector general of the neighbouring Saharanpur district, said on Thursday (July 18) that hotels and dhabas along the kanwar yatra route in his district were also ordered to display the names of their owners and employees as well as their rate lists.
Speaking to ANI, Sahni said this was in light of past disputes with kanwariyas regarding eateries’ rate lists, the serving of non-vegetarian food or proprietors drawing the names for their hotels from religions other than their own.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath prohibited the sale and purchase of meat in the open along routes for the kanwar yatra in the state this year as a mark of ‘respect’ for devotees.
The state government has also enacted such bans during previous yatras.
In a meeting convened for the yatra, Adityanath instructed officials to set up helpdesks along the pilgrimage route and arrange for the distribution of chilled water and shikanji.
He also asked them to ensure ‘pushp varsha’ – the shower of flower petals – on kanwariyas.
Congress leader Pawan Khera criticised the Muzaffarnagar police’s decision, saying “not just political parties, all right thinking people and the media must rise against this state-sponsored bigotry … We cannot allow the BJP to push the country back into dark ages.”
“The desire behind what they are proposing to do along the kanwar yatra [route] is to normalise the economic boycott of Muslims,” Khera also said on Thursday.
He claimed that many large Indian meat exporting firms were owned by Hindus. “When a Hindu exports meat, doesn’t the meat remain meat? Or does it turn into dal rice? … Similarly, if an Altaf or Rashid sells mangoes or guavas, they will remain mangoes and guavas and will not turn into meat.”
All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen leader and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi said the Muzaffarnagar police’s direction was given so that “no kanwariya buys anything from a Muslim shop by mistake” and likened it to apartheid in South Africa and discrimination against Jews in Nazi Germany.
Trinamool Congress spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Saket Gokhale said he filed a complaint against Muzaffarnagar’s senior superintendent of police to the National Human Rights Commission on the grounds that Wednesday’s order exposed eatery owners and staff to discrimination and that it “violates their fundamental right to livelihood”.
“A simple notification asking vendors to state whether they serve only vegetarian food or both veg & non-veg would have sufficed,” Gokhale said on X.
Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav asked courts to take suo motu cognisance of the order – which he said was a “social crime” – and “take appropriate punitive action”.
The Muzaffarnagar police denied that its direction was intended to discriminate against people along religious lines.
Its X account has responded to multiple posts criticising or expressing concern around its direction to shopkeepers with its statement on the issue.
The Uttar Pradesh government has also been in the spotlight in relation to another aspect of the kanwar yatra, namely that it reportedly sanctioned the felling of over 33,000 mature trees in forest divisions in three districts, including Muzaffarnagar, to have a new road to facilitate the pilgrimage.
The National Green Tribunal took suo motu cognisance of a news report on the topic from February.
Last week, it asked the Survey of India for satellite images so that the extent of deforestation could be ascertained and illegal felling be checked, PTI reported.