Jhuma Mukherjee who was threatened by Trinamul supporters; (below)An earlier signature campaign in Sector V

Calcutta, Oct. 2: Jhuma Mukherjee and her friends have not given up on the industry dream.

The employee of The Chatterjee Group, who had gone to Singur with friends to plead with Mamata Banerjee to end her siege and was threatened, will run a signature campaign tomorrow where students will “request Tata Motors to stay in West Bengal”.

Ratan Tata, who heads the Tata Group, is scheduled to land in Calcutta tomorrow morning and meet chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in the evening at Writers’ Buildings to discuss Singur.

“We will put up signature boards in several places in the state with the plea that the Tatas should build the Nano plant in Singur. We will collect signatures from everyone who is willing to lend support to our cause,” said Jhuma.

She had started Town Hall — a pro-industry forum — with her colleague Ranjan Basu and other IT professionals when the Singur siege was on. Town Hall has now launched an online campaign to drum up support for industrialisation in the state.

The signature campaign will be on from 11am to 6pm. Students and teachers of some 10 to 15 engineering colleges across the state are expected to participate.

In Salt Lake, the boards would be placed at Infinity Building, Webel More, College More and Techno India Campus More — all in Sector V.

The Forum of Engineers, Teachers and Students will collect signatures from engineering campuses in the city — Jadavpur University and Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology.

They will also collect signatures from college students and teachers in Murshidabad, Malda, Domkol and Siliguri as well as towns like Haldia, Durgapur and Kalyani.

The signatures would then be filed and a resolution prepared, which Town Hall and the Forum of Engineers, Teachers and Students would send to Tata House in Mumbai.

“Ours is an apolitical effort…. We do not know how many people will sign. But we are sure that common people will come forward for the cause of industrialisation and send out the message that they are in favour of the small-car project,” said Jhuma.

Last month, when Jhuma, Ranjan and Anirban Mukherjee had gone to Singur to meet Mamata and request her to remove the siege, Trinamul Congress supporters had threatened to beat them up if they did not leave.

One supporter told Jhuma: “I will count till three. If you don’t leave by then, you will be thrashed.”

When he started counting, the three fled.