The petitioner has claimed that she was issued a transfer order by the authorities.
The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday ordered an interim stay on transfer of a contractual school teacher by the West Bengal government from Hooghly to Malda district, a distance of about 300 kilometres.
Petitioner Anima Nath is one of the five teachers who had allegedly "consumed poison" while demonstrating in front of Bikash Bhavan, the state education department headquarters at Salk Lake area, to protest against their transfers to far-off institutes.
The petitioner has claimed that she was issued a transfer order by the authorities since she had joined protests with other contractual teachers over their job-related demands, including a salary hike.
Justice Saugata Bhattacharyya ordered an interim stay on the teacher's transfer till November 30 when the matter will come up for hearing again.
Anima Nath's lawyers Bikash Bhattacharya and Firdous Shamim submitted that the transfer order was issued but the government has no such policy for contractual teachers.
With a monthly salary of around Rs 10,000 only, the teacher cannot maintain two establishments, one at Hooghly, where her family resides, and the other at Malda, where she was transferred, they claimed.
They also stated the distance between her place of work in Hooghly district and the institute to which she was transferred in Malda is around 300 kms.
Shamim also claimed that Nath worked as a contractual teacher at a high school, and was transferred to a madrasah, which, he claimed, was also against the rules.