A Division Bench of the High Court on Tuesday directed the State government and the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) to form a permanent selection body for appointments to various posts in the board.
The Bench comprising Justice T.R. Ramachandran Nair and Justice A.V. Ramakrishna Pillai issued the directive while disposing of writ petitions regarding appointments in the board. The court said that the affairs of the board should not suffer because of the absence of regular staff. Even sub group officers were in charge of different temples. This situation had arisen because PSC had not selected staff regularly for many years. Now that the decision to entrust the recruitment process with the PSC had been dropped, another body would have to be constituted. The court pointed out that the high power committee appointed by the High Court had recommended the formation of a high power recruitment board manned by persons of integrity and efficiency to recruit to various posts in the board. This was made in 2007. A transparent system should be in place for making appointments. The affairs of the temples, including renovation, conduct of rituals, and protection of temple properties, could be taken care of only by properly appointed officers.
