The high court on Monday stayed a controversial bid by the West Bengal Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (Hidco) to sell prime Alipore zoo land, following a public interest litigation that exposed serious administrative lapses at the century-old facility.
A division bench comprising Justice Sujoy Paul and Justice Smita Das De issued the stay order after hearing allegations that the proposed land sale violated central wildlife regulations and that the zoo had significant discrepancies in its animal inventory.
“Hidco is directed not to give effect to its notification dated July 23 until further order of this court,” Justice Paul said. The formal order had not been uploaded to the court website till 8pm on Monday.
At the centre of the dispute is a 166.5-cottah plot on Belvedere Road that Hidco put up for e-auction on July 23 for “commercial use.” The land currently houses critical zoo infrastructure, including an 18.5-cottah animal quarantine centre, hospital, and aquarium facilities.
Sabyasachi Chatterjee, counsel for the petitioner Save Wild Animals of Zoo and Our Nature (Swazon), argued that the forest department had originally allocated this land specifically for zoo purposes, making its commercial sale inappropriate.
The hearing exposed a fundamental jurisdictional dispute over who controls Alipore zoo’s assets. Additional solicitor-general Ashok Chakravarty, representing the Centre, argued that since the zoo operates under the Central Zoo Authority (CZA), the state cannot sell zoo land without CZA approval — which was never sought.
“The state cannot take the decision to sell any zoo land without approval from the CZA. In this case, no such permission was granted,” Chakravarty told the court.
However, Bengal’s advocate-general Kishore Datta contested this claim, asserting the state’s authority to sell zoo land and citing a precedent where the previous Left Front government sold zoo property across from the park to a private party for hotel
construction.
Beyond the land sale, the PIL highlighted alarming administrative failures at Alipore zoo. The petition alleged a discrepancy of over 300 animals between the zoo’s inventory at the end of fiscal 2023-24 and the beginning of 2024-25, based on the CZA’s “Annual Inventory of Animals in Zoos” report.
This alleged mismatch has triggered a CZA investigation, with a team visiting the zoo and submitting a report to the court on Monday. The findings appear damning —- additional solicitor-general Chakravarty described the report as “horrible” due to poor record-keeping by zoo authorities.
The state dismissed the allegations as a “typographical mistake,” but the scale of the reported discrepancy suggests deeper systemic issues in zoo management.
The court scheduled the next hearing for a fortnight from Monday, keeping the land sale on hold until then. The case could establish crucial precedents for wildlife conservation versus commercial development across India’s zoo system.