Bagbazar Sarbojanin Durgotsav traces its origins to 1919, when it began under the name Nebubagan Baroyari Durga-puja at Sarkar House on Baghbazar Street. Over the following decade it moved several times — to Bagbazar Street in 1924, to Kantapukur in 1925, and to the Bagbazar Kali temple in 1927 — before social worker Nagendra Nath Ghoshal formalised the organisation and gave it its current name around 1926.
The puja's growth into a major public event is credited to Durgacharan Bandyopadhyay, elected president in 1930, who expanded it into a large-scale exhibition with backing from the Calcutta Corporation. That same year, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose approved the committee's use of a site formerly used as a metal yard; Bose went on to serve as the puja's president from 1938 to 1939, and personally donated 500 rupees to it.
More than a century on, the puja still keeps to its old calendar — opening on Shukla Panchami and closing on Lakshmi Puja day — with its Birastami and Sindur Utsab celebrations still central to how it's marked every year, alongside the public exhibition component that's been part of it since 1929–30.