The petition, filed by the school's general secretary A M Adenwalla, pleads that the school, which was set up in 1970, be allowed to function at its present location. The petition was admitted today and will be heard on April 6. Till then, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has been directed not to evict the students.

BMC owns the premises, which also houses a Marathi medium night school and a regular municipal school. The Urdu night school, run by the Malad Education and Welfare Society, occupies six classrooms and has about 110 students spread across standards VIII, IX and X. The other schools are run by the BMC's education department.

The corporation is keen on tearing down thepresent structure and constructing a building in its place. The construction for this building is to be carried out by a charitable trust, Koshish. Adenwalla alleged that the civic education department has been trying to get the school out of the premises over the last two years. Last year, the BMC allegedly locked up the school rooms from March 20 to April 4 without giving any specific reasons. But the BMC permitted the school to function after the management moved the Bombay High Court. According to Adenwalla, the BMC counsel had promised High Court that the school would not be disturbed in the future.

He added that the management had pumped in over Rs four lakh on its own steam to provide furniture and repair the building. Adenwalla also claimed that the management has shown its willingness to take up construction of the school building.

The school gets a grant from the BMC, which also picks up the tab for the teachers' salaries. The management doesn't have the kind of money needed to rent outpremises, added Adenwalla.However, a corporation official stated that the municipal body only wanted to replace the school structure as it is in a dilapidated condition. The school management was asked to move out last year, but when they did not show any indication of vacating the premises, they were served a notice in January 1999, asking them to make arrangements to run the school on their own and vacate by premises by March 31. However, there was no move in any direction either from the management or from the education department, he claimed.

Civic education chairperson Sadhana Mane told Express Newsline that the school trustees had failed to approach her earlier, and were waking up to their situation only now. ``We have made arrangements for running classes in the other two schools to a municipal school in Malad (east). We would have done this for the Urdu medium also. But nobody approached us,'' Mane said. ``What are we supposed to do if not serve a notice to the school?''

The civic improvementscommittee passed a proposal in 1996 itself to develop the plot and construct a building which will house all the existing schools, added Mane. Koshish, an ENT charitable trust, had agreed to carry out the entire construction of the school building.