The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has decided to begin signing individual agreements with shop owners of the dilapidated Park Circus market by year-end.

Following the signing of the pacts, the stalls will be relocated to Park Circus Maidan early next year so that the old market can be demolished.

Officials said an agreement would be a legal document, with a stall owner providing his Aadhaar card, PAN, rent details, and certified copy of the existing shop’s measurement to the civic body and agreeing to a two-year deal of shifting to Park Circus Maidan till the new market building is constructed.

In the intervening time, the stall owner will pay the KMC 50 per cent rent per month.

“There are over 350 stall owners and barring a small fraction, most of them are willing to relocate to Park Circus Maidan. The traders’ body has returned the final draft of the agreement we sent them with minor changes,” said Amiruddin (Bobby), who heads the KMC’s market department as the member mayor-in-council.

“The signing of individual agreements is likely to begin from the year-end so that we can start constructing the market from early next year.”

The existing Park Circus market building, portions of which were built in the late 1930s and the rest in the mid-1950s, is now in disrepair.

A section of businessmen said the western portion along Beckbagan Row is in a bad state. They added that several other sections are also in a precarious state

The KMC has decided to replace the building with an eight-storey structure, including a basement.

The tentative timeline for completion of the work is around two years.

During a recent inspection of the site for rehabilitating the traders — northern side of an existing tennis court at Park Circus Maidan — the civic officials met representatives from the market and decided over 90,000 square feet of space would be allocated for the stalls, senior officers of the market department said.

“It was way more than what the traders had demanded at the maidan,” an official said

The KMC next addressed a long-time demand of the traders from the Park Circus market — of altering the market’s status from grade B to C.

At a meeting held a fortnight back, it was decided that the market’s status would be downgraded to C till the time a new building is built so that traders who have to pay 50 per cent of the existing rent end up paying even less.

“We have returned the copy of the draft agreement sent to us with minor changes. The best part is over 50 vendors who have been selling goods outside the Park Circus market for decades have been included in the list that would be rehabilitated,” said Tapas Kumar Mukherjee, general secretary of the Traders of Kolkata Municipal Markets’ Welfare Society

“We want the KMC to ready the stalls at Park Circus Maidan at the earliest so that the market starts operating from the new location.”

The Park Circus market, renovated last in 2019, caught the attention of the civic bosses when, in July 2022, 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.

The KMC has since been trying to work out a deal with the existing stall owners so that they can be shifted to Park Circus Maidan and the old market structure is replaced with a new one.