Mamata Banerjee’s war room has acquired a touch of the boardroom with two IIM Calcutta students from the Class of 2011 joining Team Trinamul to help it connect with Gen Y this election.

Hariharan Sriram, 24, and Mansha Tandon, 27, have jobs lined up with multinational FMCG companies but it’s their two-month political “internship” with a party that is promising change that the duo are most excited about.

“It’s a big opportunity. Other states are also going to the polls but the one to watch is Bengal. We were keen to participate in the process,” Chennai boy Hariharan, a BTech from Trichy’s National Institute of Technology, told Metro.

Mansha, who studied in Sydney before joining the Joka campus, said the opportunity to be a part of what could be a “watershed moment” after 34 years of Left rule was hard to pass.

For Trinamul, which last month put up a new, improved website, Hariharan and Mansha’s presence in the strategy team means a big cyber leap in the click war with the CPM. The duo’s brief is to help Trinamul blaze a trail in the virtual world, creating channels for focused publicity and interactive communication with Gen Y voters.

Using the Internet to connect with American youth had worked wonders for Barack Obama. Mamata, second to none in the art of communication, is said to have readily given the green signal to the proposal to get the two IIM students on board.

“Mamatadi is very open to new ideas and concepts. I wasn’t surprised that she promptly okayed the two IIM Calcutta grads’ wish to intern with the Trinamul,” party vice-president Derek O’Brien said.

Although this will be Hariharan and Mansha’s first experience of strategising for a political party, they aren’t the first IIM students to apply for — and get — such an assignment. In April 2007, Chepuri Sri Krishna, a student of IIM Ahmedabad, had interned with the CPM.

In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, IIM Calcutta student Harsh Vardhan Chhaparia had joined BJP veteran LK Advani’s campaign team.

Hariharan, a cricket fan, and Mansha, an aspiring novelist, made their first trip to Trinamul Bhavan on Monday to meet the people they would work with and find out what was expected of them.

Party leaders said they would be part of a team with 20-25 members that would oversee the electioneering process. Three to four battle-hardened Trinamul leaders would be around to guide the team.

“People from different walks of life are joining the cause. We welcome everybody,” Trinamul state president Subrata Bakshi said.

Hariharan, whose favourite cricketer Rahul Dravid was pitted against Mamata at The Telegraph National Debate on February 18, had put himself up as a candidate for a position in the Trinamul war room four months ago. So what if his political experience is “zilch”?

Mansha, on the other hand, has been through the grind of student politics during her days in Australia. “To understand politics, it is important to be a part of the process,” she said.

As IIM students, Mansha and Hariharan studied public policy and management along with the politics of development, among other papers. Now both are looking forward to the “practicals” at Trinamul Bhavan.

Mansha hopes to write a book with references to her experience of working for a political strategy team in a landmark election. She and Hariharan are eagerly awaiting a meeting with Mamata once she returns from Delhi.

Hariharan, who was at the Sher-e-Bangla stadium in Mirpur to see India crush Bangladesh in the first match of World Cup 2011, might have to skip the Eden Gardens matches later this month because he is all padded up for the biggest match of the season: Trinamul versus CPM.

Psst: Another IIM Calcutta student is waiting in the wings for his war-room debut at Trinamul Bhavan. His candidature is being favourably looked into, a general in the war room said.