slaves contacting standby namenode

Hi,

We have a high availability namenodes configured using QJM mode with auto failover enabled. Its been observed for a while that although there is no fail over or the state change of the active namenode, some clients are observed to contact the standby namenode and get almost stuck. The amount of number of clients contacting the standby namenode on port 8020 is visibly huge from the namenode logs on the standby master. What could be the reason that the slaves are trying to contact the standby although it is not in a position to address any of the fs queries as the state is standby.

Please do let me know if there is any information needed to triage this further.

thanks,

Nikhil