Kanpur/ Bareilly, Jun 8 (IANS): Shrines and religious places in Kanpur will not open from Monday because the leaders of all religions have expressed their inability to ensure crowd management.

In Bareilly, various clerics have appealed to the people to maintain social distancing and not to 'linger on' at the shrines.

People have been asked to perform 'wudu' (washing of hands) at home before coming to the mosques.

In Kanpur, at a meeting with district magistrate Brahmadeo Ram Tiwari and DIG/SSP Anant Deo, the priests and clerics and other religious leaders said that devotees would be thronging the shrines when they open up and crowd management would be a problem.

They said that opening of religious places should be deferred for some more time because it would be very difficult to check sanitization of religious places, hand washing and social distancing in such a situation.

Before opening the religious places, the religious leaders will have to fill a form, assuring the authorities that they would comply with the Covid-19 protocol whenever religious places opened.

It may be mentioned that under unlock 1.0, the state government had issued guidelines to open religious places all over the state from Monday.

Meanwhile, in Bareilly, the Sajjadanasheen of Dargah Aala Hazrat, Mufti Ahsan Raza Qadri, has appealed to community members across the country to maintain social distancing while visiting mosques and dargahs.

He asked the people to visit mosques only for 'farz namaz' and offer 'sunnat and nafil namaz' at home. He has also advised people to do 'wudu' at home and avoid using toilets in mosques.