Kanwar route SC QR order stay welcomed in UP

    Moradabad/Meerut/Baghpat (UP), Jul 22 (PTI) The Supreme Court order refusing to stay the QR code directive meant for eateries along the kanwar yatra route in UP and Uttarakhand has been welcomed by many.
    The order pertains to all hotel owners who have shops along the kanwar routes in the two states, and ordains they must display a QR code that gives the details of the establishment when scanned.
    A bench of Justices M M Sundresh and N Kotiswar Singh said it was not going into the issues over the display of names of the hotel or dhaba owner and the QR code, Tuesday being the last day of the kanwar yatra.
    Raghuveer Singh, a government official who has been offering 'gangajal' at Neelkanth Mahadev for the last 23 years, hailed it as a "good order." "Now there will be no difference based on communities, and everybody will follow this without any objection," he said.
    Sharafat Hussain, the owner of Neelkanth Dhaba on a national highway, said, "We have a copy of the food licence pasted at our dhaba for the last 20 years." Food inspector Raj Hans Srivastava said that all hotels and dhabas have already been following the guidelines, but they have pasted the licence copy inside and not outside.
    Following the direction of the food department, when they pasted their licence copies outside, they were all washed out in the rain, so they were told to put them back.
    The order is meant for all dhabas and not only the Muslim dhabas, Srivastava insisted.
    The detractors of the order have claimed that it has been issued for religious profiling, with Muslim eatery owners at the receiving end of it.
    The Supreme Court's order has been welcomed by the hotel and dhaba owners located on the kanwar routes in Meerut. Nitin, operator of a hotel located on Delhi-Dehradun road, said, "There is nothing wrong in this. This will give information to the kanwariyas about who is running the eatery, place from where they are buying food items.''
     Muslim dhaba operators located on the kanwar route have also supported the court's instructions. A Muslim dhaba operator said, "We are already with the government and its decisions."
     In the Baghpat district, shopkeepers have adopted a positive attitude towards this order, and have also linked it to the respect for religious sentiments. Imamuddin, who runs a tea stall, said, "It is very good. This shows who the real owner of the shop is. The customer has the right to know this."
    The Supreme Court last year stayed similar directives issued by Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Madhya Pradesh governments, asking eateries along the kanwar route to display the names of their owners, staff and other details.
    A large number of Shiv devotees head to the Ganga from various places and carry back the gangajal in kanwars to perform 'jalabhishek' at local Shiv temples in the Hindu month of Shravan.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)