The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed dhaba and restaurant owners on the route of the Kanwar Yatra to follow the Uttar Pradesh government's rule requiring them to display their licence and registration details.

"All the concerned hotel owners at this point shall fulfill the order of license and registration certificate as mandated statutorily. We're making it clear that we're not venturing into the matters being disputed. The application is closed", the Supreme Court ruled in its order, quoted by ANI.

Earlier this year, the Uttar Pradesh government had issued an order asking food outlets to display QR codes with details about their owners. The Uttarakhand government soon issued a similar order.

Last week, the Supreme Court had sent notices to both the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments.

The petition, filed by scholar Apoorvanand Jha and others, argued that such rules violate the basic rights of citizens and may lead to discriminatory targeting of certain communities.

"These new provisions require the exhibition of QR codes on all restaurants and food shops along the Kanwar trail, which disclose the owners' names and identities, thus accomplishing the very same discriminatory profiling previously stayed by this court," Jha quoted from a June 25 UP government release.

"Vague and sweeping mandates intentionally combine the licensing requirements with the other illegal demand to show religious identity, and open up room for violent enforcement of such a patently arbitrary demand both by vigilante mobs and by ground-level authorities. There is a serious and imminent threat of irremediable harm to the basic rights of concerned vendors, especially from the minority communities, unless this Court issues urgent directions to stop Respondents from carrying on this indirect implementation," it said.

The petition urged the Court to limit such measures to valid licensing rules and remove unclear instructions that force people to reveal their identity.

Last year, the Supreme Court had stopped the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments from making shopkeepers and street vendors along the Kanwar Yatra route display their own names and those of their workers.

The Court had said food vendors only needed to mention the type of food being served. In its 22 July order, the Court stated, "We consider it fit to grant interim order restraining the enforcement of the impugned directives. That is to say, the food vendors (including owners of dhabas, restaurants, foods and vegetable vendors, hawkers, etc) may be asked to exhibit the type of food which they are offering to the kanwariyas. But they should not be compelled to exhibit the owners' name/identity and the workers posted in their respective shops."