Portions of Park Circus Maidan will be closed to make space for relocating traders from the dilapidated Park Circus market and to host a circus, the state urban development department has said in a notification.

Discussions about shifting the traders from the Beckbagan Row market have been going on for years, but the notification, a seal of approval from the government, was issued after the Puja vacation.

The notification mentions “temporary closure of the whole of Park Circus Maidan,” though officials of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), the custodian of the ground, clarified that only certain portions would be shut.

“The portion next to the mosque inside the Maidan will be used to shift the shops from Park Circus market, while the circus will be held on the ground facing Lady Brabourne College. The rest of the Maidan will remain open to visitors,” a KMC official said on Wednesday.

The date for the closure has not yet been decided. Officials had earlier said the circus — returning to Park Circus Maidan after a decade — is tentatively scheduled between December 1 and January 31, 2026. It is unclear whether the market relocation will happen before that.

Amiruddin (Bobby), mayoral council member in charge of KMC’s markets department, told Metro that the final stage before relocation — signing of agreements between the roughly 400 traders and the KMC — will begin soon. “Once the agreements are signed, we will start the shifting. We have set a two-year deadline to finish the new building from the day construction begins,” Amiruddin said, though he could not specify when construction would start.

Temporary structures will be built at Park Circus Maidan to house the traders.

Mohammad Farid, president of the Park Circus Pouro Byabasayee Welfare Samity, said the traders have agreed to relocate. “We will move as soon as KMC executes the agreements. Each agreement will mention stall size and height,” he said. “The KMC has promised to bring us back to Beckbagan Row once the basement, ground and first floors of the new building are complete, within two years.”

Built in phases between the late 1930s and mid-1950s, the existing two-storey market is in a crumbling condition. In July 2022, a 56-year-old stall owner was injured when a chunk of concrete fell near his shop.