A senior officer in the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation said on the condition of anonymity that the zoo recently received a letter from its Visakhapatnam counterparts stating that a team of caretakers will be arriving in the city to facilitate shifting of the animal.

Laxmi will be shifted as per the directions of the Central Zoo Authority (CZA).

While the city zoo authorities are looking forward to shift both the elephants, the Visakhapatnam zoo is interested in only Laxmi. The animal is likely to be shifted within the next 10-15 days.

On August 1, 1996, the city zoo authorities brought a couple of elephants (male Shankar and female Swaraswati) from Mysore to the Siddhartha Garden and Zoo. The couple gave birth to Laxmi in November 9, 1997. The male elephant died in the zoo died on August 9, 2000. Since then, only two female elephants have been in the zoo.

Recently, former zoo in-charge B S Naikwade confirmed that the proposal to hand over both the elephants had been approved.

In 2009, the CZA officials had visited various zoos in the country and felt that elephants should not be kept in captivity, but sent to dedicated camps in the forest areas. The team had also reviewed the zoo in Aurangabad and felt that the space provided to the animals was not enough.

The CZA had also directed about 64 other zoo authorities in the county to shift all the elephants to bigger and better places.

The AMC zoo authorities have provided 14,00sqm area in the zoo to elephants against the requirement of 34 acres. The Indira Gandhi Zoological Park is one among the largest zoos of India situated in the natural surroundings of a reserve forest. It is spread across 625 acres amid Kambalakonda reserve forest.