Advocate General C J Sawant told the division bench of Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justice A P Shah that the state government had decided to shift it, but since it was an important state undertaking, with an annual turnover of Rs seven crore, the matter had to be placed before the state cabinet. The matter has now been adjourned to April 28.

Sawant told the bench that the state had two options regarding MAFCO. They could either close down the unit at the park or shift it out. The MAFCO unit which employs around 153 workers, is however, only one of the problems that the state will have to address itself to. The others are: the time required for setting up of infrastructural requirements like electricity lines, water taps and accessible roads at the rehabilitationsites for around 60,000 of the encroachers in the forest land. Also, some of these rehabilitation sites have been marked in areas reserved as green zones. These reservations will have to be shifted to other areas to compensate for the rehabilitation sites.``We expect you to have the answers to all these questions when you appear the next time,'' said the Chief Justice to which Sawant agreed.

The difficulty of shifting, what is being touted as an entire township outside the national park to areas like Kalyan, Vashi, Shahpur and Thane, showed itself at the court today when counsels for the various slums in the park argued that there were schools and dispensaries in their areas which would have to be relocated as well.

Counsel for the slums at Ketkipada, advocate Mihir Desai, alleged that there were four schools and 16 dispensaries and chemists' shops that had established itself in the slumpolis. ``The state will have to shift an entire township,'' he said. He also argued that while the state government'ssurvey showed only 61,000 encroachers of which 33,000 were found to be eligible for rehabilitation, he had a list of 80,000 residents who would have to be rehabilitated.

Chief Justice Sabharwal noted that a proper forum would have to look at the grievances of the residents who claimed they had a right to rehabilitation.The advocate general also pointed out that the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), under the Slum Clearance and Improvements Act, had declared 20 acres of the park a slum and that the state would have to take proper steps to undo the damage.

Expressing their concern on the infrastructural amenities at the rehabilitation sites, Justice Shah said that the state will have to ensure that the land is levelled and water taps provided to the residents.