India, Nov. 27 -- The Orissa high court on Thursday quashed a state government order that authorised MLAs and MPs to recommend transfers of government school teachers, ruling that political intervention cannot determine administrative decisions in the education sector.

The school and mass education department, in May this year, had permitted legislators to recommend up to 15 transfer cases between May 15 and June 15. The recommendations were to be reviewed by the district-level transfer committee and applied only to intra-district transfers, with a bar on moving teachers from rural to urban areas.

Following this, two school teachers from Kalahandi - Ranjan Kumar Tripathy and Fakir Mahananda - had moved the high court challenging the pol...