Nandankanan Yields Handsome Return To The Govt: RTI

Bhubaneswar: The Nandankanan Zoological Park, which attracts both young and old from the state and outside, has generated a collective revenue of over Rs 52 crore during the last five financial years.

The revenue collection generated from ticket sales, in fact, went up from a little over Rs seven crore in 2014-15 to Rs 14.29 crore during the 2017-18 fiscal. During the ongoing financial year (up to December 2018) its revenue generation stood at Rs 11.59 crores, an RTI has revealed.

It’s one of those tourist destinations in the state which has paid back handsomely to the State Government. RTI data revealed that the government spent Rs 23 crore during the last five fiscal years, yielding Rs 52 crore in revenue.

The spendings included both non-plan and plan expenditure.

The information was received on February 13 this year from the Department of Forest and Environment.

Over 1.49 crore visitors thronged the park between 2014-15 up to now, which comes to an average footfall of 30 lakh per financial year. The highest number of people visiting the park was recorded in 2015-16 at 33.19 lakh.

Death of animals in captivity between 2015 t0 2018 stood at 246. But the information collected through RTI showed that the number of death had come down from 100 in 2015 to 23 in 2018. In 2017, it stood at 74.