State-funded schools and colleges run by Ramakrishna Mission will soon be allowed to appoint teachers independently, a right the order has been demanding for long.

“We have decided to grant full autonomy to Ramakrishna Mission so that they can appoint their own teachers,” chief minister Mamata Banerjee said while addressing the seventh convocation of the Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda University, Belur.

The Mission-run institutions, like other schools and colleges receiving state grants to pay salaries to their staff, have to appoint teachers through the state school and college service commissions.

“Once the new rules come into effect, Ramakrishna Mission will not have to appoint teachers through the service commissions,” the chief minister announced at the programme.

Higher education minister Bratya Basu said in his speech at the convocation that the move to free the Mission of state control over appointment of teachers was part of the government’s effort to ensure that “academic institutions are run by academics”.

According to sources in the higher education department, the government is almost ready with a draft legislation proposing “full administrative autonomy” for Mission-run institutions to recruit teachers and other employees independently.

The move, sources said, is based on the recommendation of an advisory committee set up by the Trinamul government last year to suggest ways to restructure and depoliticise higher education.

Ramakrishna Mission monks have long been demanding that they be given a free hand in recruitment to make sure that the teachers and other employees are competent enough to groom the students according to the ideology, values and principles of the order.

When the erstwhile Left Front government had formulated the West Bengal School Service Commission Act in 1997, a controversy had erupted over bringing the Mission-run schools within the purview of the body.

Recruitment in the Mission schools were kept suspended till 2001 but the monks had to finally accept the provisions of the act and appoint teachers through the school service commission.

“We are happy with the government’s decision,” said Swami Tyagarupananda, the principal of Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira, Belur.