SC moved against U.P., Uttarakhand orders to shop owners along Kanwar Yatra route to display their names
Petitioners said the directives were a deliberate attempt to discriminate on the grounds of religion and caste and a blatant violation of fundamental rights
File picture of devotees near Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh
| Photo Credit: R.V. Moorthy
Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra, academic Apoorvanand Jha and columnist Aakar Patel have separately moved the Supreme Court against directives issued by the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments to owners of shops along the Kanwar Yatra route to display their names and that of their staff members prominently.
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In their petition, Mr. Jha and Mr. Patel said the directives were a deliberate attempt to discriminate on the grounds of religion and caste and a blatant violation of fundamental rights.
Their petition argued that the two States were using their machinery to choke the rights of shopkeepers who belonged to certain communities. The directives had no authority of law and ought to be quashed.
“These directives promote discrimination solely based on religious and caste identity as they do not require the display of food items being served or a statement that no non-vegetarian or non-satvik food is being served, but only the display of religious or caste identity explicit in one’s name,” the petition said.
Ms. Moitra has sought an immediate stay on the implementation of the two directives. The MP said they ran the risk of sowing the seeds of communal discord.
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The TMC leader said the directives amounted to forcible disclosure of religious identity in the name of respecting the pilgrims’ dietary choices.
“Their dietary choices are a pretext or a proxy for the compelled disclosure of personal, and in this case, religious identity”, the plea said.
It alleged that this was a move engineered to create a socially-enforced economic boycott on Muslim shop owners and workers and the loss of their livelihoods.
On Monday, an apex court Bench headed by Justice Hrishikesh Roy is scheduled to hear a connected plea filed by NGO Association of Protection of Civil Rights against the Uttar Pradesh government’s controversial order.
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