Authorities in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar district have directed dhabas, food stalls and hotels along the Kanwar Yatra pilgrimage route to display the names of their owners and operators, Quint Hindi reported on Saturday.

Local media quoted Abhishek Singh, Muzaffarnagar’s senior superintendent of police, as saying that the decision was taken to “avoid confusion” among devotees who will travel on the route.

“[The decision was taken] so that no allegations and counter-allegations are made and no law and order situation arises later,” Singh was quoted as saying.

In 2023, Yashveer Maharaj, a priest from an ashram in Muzaffarnagar, had demanded that Muslim owners of establishments display their names on their businesses, The Indian Express reported.

On Wednesday, a post on his Facebook account said that the Muzaffarnagar authorities had on June 24 promised the priest that “all Muslims would write their Muslim names in bold letters on their hotels, dhabas, tea and sweet shops, and fruit and vegetable carts”.

During the annual pilgrimage, devotees of the Hindu deity Shiva collect water from the Ganga near Haridwar and carry it back to their home states to offer at temples.

The devotees, called Kanwariyas, travel hundreds of kms on foot from their homes in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh to Uttarakhand and back.

This year’s Kanwar Yatra will start on July 22 and conclude on August 2.

During this time, the name of the eatery’s owner must be written clearly with the establishment’s name, or on a different display board, Quint Hindi quoted Muzaffarnagar’s City Magistrate Vikas Kashyap as saying.

Uttar Pradesh minister Kapil Dev Aggarwal, who attended a meeting related to the arrangements for the pilgrimage, was quoted by The Indian Express as saying that while he had no objection to Muslim-owned businesses in the area, their shops should not be named after Hindu deities.

This was to avoid confusion among Kanwariyas about these eateries serving only vegetarian food, he was quoted as saying by IANS.

Aggarwal is the Muzaffarnagar MLA.

Congress leader Pawan Khera on Wednesday urged “all right-thinking people and the media” to rise against “this state-sponsored bigotry”.

In a social media post, Khera said: “We cannot allow the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] to push the country back into dark ages.”

The BJP has been in power in Uttar Pradesh since March 2017.