KOCHI: The High Court has declared the Commissioner of the Travancore and Cochin Devaswom Boards will always be a Hindu.
A Division Bench comprising Justice P R Ramachandra Menon and Justice Devan Ramachandran issued the directive on a batch of petitions challenging the amendments to the Travancore-Cochin Hindu Religious Institutions Act 1950 (TCHRI Act) which enabled the appointment of a non-Hindu as the Devaswom Commissioner.
The judgment said “the court fully justified in declaring the post of Devaswom Commissioner, under the TCHRI Act, is a part of the Devaswom Department under it and axiomatically that, under the rigor of Section 29(1), such an officer will always have to be a person professing the Hindu religion. It is so declared.”