Please vote for my students, the Kool Kolkatans, on Hass Ley India — the text message is doing the rounds among all those known to the faculty members of Bhawanipur college. And why not? The foursome, who passed out of the south Calcutta institute recently, has made it to the finals of the “comedy gang war” on Bindass.

“Just think, we came to know of the auditions just a day in advance,” says Md. Aabid Shamim, leader of the gang, also featuring Kapil Madnani, Nitin Bararia and Veenit Nahata.

Hass Ley India started out as a five-city hunt, travelling to Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta, Ahmedabad and Lucknow to choose one comedy gang per city. The winners will star in a UTV comedy film.

“These contestants are all amateurs, unlike those in the Great Indian Laughter Challenge who are often professionals. And they are all in the 18-to-25 age group,” says Shekhar Suman, who is judging the show along with Makrand Deshpande. That is why Shekhar says he does his best to encourage raw talent. “Initially, the teams looked a bit kiddish. But I realised it would be wrong to judge them as professionals. So I prefer to sit back and watch them grow.”

That is where the Calcutta boys have scored. “The Calcutta team is tremendous. They have pulled themselves up so many notches that they are almost perfect now.”

The result? A perfect 40 for the group in a recent episode. “The judges gave us a standing ovation,” gushes Aabid.

Amateur they may be, but it’s not as if all the boys acted for the first time on the show. “I’ve been acting since Class IX and have done stand-up acts in college fests,” says Aabid. Partnering Nitin, he also won a comedy contest at their college fest Umang in 2007. That talent has now been groomed by TV personality Roshan Abbas.

Nitin, in fact, insists on not being bracketed with stand-up comedians. “They tell you jokes. But we are acting out a given script.” He is open to other kinds of roles, too, but only after proving himself in comedy.

For that the big day is March 6, when the finals take place. “We hear Priyadarshan Sir might come and it would be a dream come true if Rajpal Yadav is also there,” Nitin says.

Shekhar is putting his money on the Kool Kolkatans but much will depend on what viewers in Calcutta do on D-Day.