A team of officials from the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s (KMC) markets and buildings department is scheduled to visit the Park Circus Maidan next week for a preliminary scan of the area where stall owners of the crumbling Park Circus market can be shifted before the market is pulled down.
The team will take note of the space that can be made available to the traders after carving out land for temporary pathways, washrooms and maintenance centres for utilities including electricity and water.
Primarily, it has been decided that shopkeepers will be allotted almost the same space they now have in the three-storeyed market building in Beck Bagan Row.
Besides the Park Circus Maidan, the team will scan land parcels closer to the existing market to find out whether the shopkeepers can be accommodated there.
“The buildings department will draw up a plan for the rehabilitation of the stall owners after identifying the space where the traders can be temporarily relocated,” said Amiruddin (Bobby), mayoral council member in charge of markets.
Senior officials in the civic headquarters said mayor Firhad Hakim had met officials from the market department on Monday to discuss the Park Circus market project.
The civic body has decided that it will rebuild the Park Circus market on its own, not through any public-private participation (PPP).
“The mayor has told us that if the Park Circus Maidan is selected for the relocation of the traders, space should be allocated in such a manner that various religious occasions that are held on the ground throughout the year are not affected,” Amiruddin said.
Apart from 400-odd stall owners, there were around 145 squatter vendors in the market.
Three years after the last renovation work in 2019, the gaze of senior officials including that of the mayor shifted to the Park Circus market building in July when a 56-year-old stall owner was injured after a chunk of concrete fell on him near shop number 13 in the B block of the market.
