Greater Noida to get country’s first night safari park

GREATER NOIDA: The Greater Noida Authority is all set to revive its ambitious 102-hectare ‘Night Safari Park,’ on the lines of the Singapore night zoo, near Gautam Budh Nagar University. Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav gave an in-principle approval to the project, proposed by the Mulayam government in 2005, in a meeting on Monday.
The project could not take off at the time since it was yet to get a clearance from the Supreme Court, which banned setting up of new zoos taking into account the deplorable conditions of the existing ones. By the time the court’s clearance came in 2009, the Authority realized it was unable to finance the project and the safari park was deemed unfeasible.
“The project was very well received by the public when it had initially been proposed. Now that the CM has approved the safari park, it will take off soon,” said the Industrial Development Commissioner, Anil Kumar Gupta. “Bernard Harrison will be the consultants for the project and Greater Noida Authority shall be a partner. The project will be based on a Public Private Partnership model,” Gupta added.
When the zoo was proposed in 2005, it was to be kept open from 7pm to midnight and was to have nocturnal animals like leopards, hyenas and owls sourced from within India, besides big cats from South Africa and South American countries to make it a major tourist attraction. The visitors were to be taken around on battery-operated, noiseless, pollution-free and a no-headlights train.
Incidentally, the current CEO of the Noida Authority, Sanjiv Saran, and the current chairperson of the Noida, Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway authorities, Rakesh Bahadur, were the officials heading the Greater Noida Authority when the safari park was first proposed.