The orders of the police in Muzaffarnagar directing hotels, dhabas, and other food-selling shops along the Kanwar Yatra route in the district to display the names of their owners and employees to prevent “confusion” among devotees have drawn sharp criticism from opposition parties.

Reacting to these orders, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav wrote on the social media platform X, “The honourable court should take suo motu cognizance and investigate the government’s intent behind such administration and take appropriate punitive action. Such orders are social crimes, which want to spoil the peaceful atmosphere of harmony...and what will be known by the name of the person whose name is Guddu, Munna, Chhotu, or Fateh?”

BSP supremo Mayawati also expressed her objection. She wrote on social media that the new government order to all the hotels, dhabas, and cart shopkeepers on the Kanwar Yatra route in western UP and Muzaffarnagar district to prominently display the full name of the owner is a wrong tradition that can spoil the harmonious atmosphere.

“In the public interest, the government should withdraw it immediately,” she said.

She further criticised the UP’s Sambhal district administration’s inappropriate order requiring teachers and students in basic government schools to remove their shoes and slippers in the classroom, calling for the government’s immediate attention to this matter as well.

Congress leader Pawan Khera also criticised the Muzaffarnagar police’s decision, stating that “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 the dark ages.”

Khera added, “The desire behind what they are proposing to do along the Kanwar Yatra [route] is to normalize the economic boycott of Muslims.”

He pointed out that many large Indian meat-exporting firms are owned by Hindus, questioning if meat changes its nature based on the religion of the seller.

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,” likening it to apartheid in South Africa and discrimination against Jews in Nazi Germany.

Trinamool Congress spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP Saket Gokhale filed a complaint against Muzaffarnagar’s senior superintendent of police to the National Human Rights Commission, arguing that the order exposed eatery owners and staff to discrimination and violated their fundamental right to livelihood.

Gokhale suggested that a simple notification asking vendors to state whether they serve only vegetarian food or both veg and non-veg would have sufficed.

Interestingly, the Muzaffarnagar police denied that their direction was intended to discriminate along religious lines. Their X account responded to multiple posts criticising or expressing concern around their direction to shopkeepers with their statement on the issue.

Muzaffarnagar Superintendent of Police Abhishek Singh said the Uttar Pradesh government also asked food carts and stands to comply, explaining that the decision was to ensure there was “no confusion of any kind among kanwariyas [Kanwar Yatra pilgrims]” and to prevent any situation that could escalate into a law and order issue.

Ajay Kumar Sahni, deputy inspector general of the neighboring Saharanpur district, said on Thursday 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. Sahni cited 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 as the reason for this directive.

Earlier this month, Muzaffarnagar’s BJP MLA Kapil Dev Aggarwal stated that 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.”

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has 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 help desks 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. Hindu pilgrims undertake the Kanwar Yatra around this time of year, traveling by foot to

Uttarakhand to collect water from the Ganga river, which they then offer in Shiva temples. This year’s yatra will begin on Monday (July 22).

The Uttar Pradesh government has also been in the spotlight regarding another aspect of the Kanwar Yatra, reportedly sanctioning the felling of over 33,000 mature trees in forest divisions in three districts, including Muzaffarnagar, to build a new road to facilitate the pilgrimage. The National Green Tribunal took suo motu cognisance of a news report on the topic from February.