Reproducible in the demos: https://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-mvc/grid/persist-state
The difference in the rendering is shown below. In the Kendo UI Grid's Html, there is a span with class "k-cell-inner" that wraps the ".k-link" span, whereas in the MVC Grid, only an anchor is rendered.
Kendo UI:
<th scope="col" role="columnheader" data-field="ContactName" aria-haspopup="true" rowspan="1" data-title="Contact Name" aria-label="Contact Name Press ctrl + space to group" data-index="0" id="a44eadd9-62c6-4154-9735-4351a9cb5064" class="k-header k-filterable" data-role="columnsorter" style="touch-action: none;">
<span class="k-cell-inner">
<span class="k-link">
<span class="k-column-title">Contact Name</span>
</span>
<a class="k-header-column-menu" href="#" title="Contact Name edit column settings" aria-label="Contact Name edit column settings" tabindex="-1">
<span class="k-icon k-i-more-vertical"></span>
</a>
</span>
</th>
MVC:
<th class="k-header k-filterable" data-field="ContactName" data-index="0" data-title="Contact Name" id="f28afe50-210a-474d-9943-113f6bd4ad15" scope="col" data-role="columnsorter" style="touch-action: none;">
<a class="k-link" href="/aspnet-mvc/grid/persiststate_customers_read?grid-sort=ContactName-asc">Contact Name</a>
<a class="k-header-column-menu" href="#" title="Contact Name edit column settings" aria-label="Contact Name edit column settings" tabindex="-1">
<span class="k-icon k-i-more-vertical"></span>
</a>
</th>
Identical rendering.