New Delhi, July 15 -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued a notice to the state governments of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand seeking their responses to a plea challenging the mandate that requires shopkeepers along the Kanwar Yatra route to display QR codes, which could be scanned to reveal the names of the owners.

The UP government had issued an order earlier this year, mandating eateries to display QR codes containing information on the shop owners. Subsequently, the Uttarakhand government also followed with a similar order.

The mandate, now being challenged in the Supreme Court, is alleged to be violative of the fundamental rights of citizens.

The plea further states that the direction requiring vendors to display their names and id...