Though the Left Front partners are averse to showcasing industrialisation for wooing voters, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has a different dream. He made it clear that he will take “brave steps” to ensure that industrialisation occupies an important place in his poll agenda.

He was speaking at the sidelines of a book release programme on Saturday at the party headquarters in Alimuddin Street, the place from where his reformist agenda was ‘controlled’ after the Nandigram stalemate a year ago. “I had a dream,” said an emotional chief minister referring to the pullout of the Nano from Singur. “I am not concerned about the prospect of the car but about the employment generation. The day Nano was launched from elsewhere, it reminded me that 6,000 youths could have received jobs here,” said Bhattacharjee. Refuting the common perception in political circles that after Nandigram and Singur fiascos, he will exclude industrialisation from poll programme, Bhattacharjee said: “We have to take more brave steps.”

Party sources said the CM had told his close aides that he wanted a final solution to the debate on land acquisition and industrialisation. “I agree that villagers feel that the government will snatch away their land. But this fear is baseless and we have failed to convince them,” the chief minister reportedly told his aides. “Land acquisition is necessary. The question is the procedure of acquiring land, which we have to modify,” he said.

After much debate within the LF, the CPM brass had decided not to include the Nayachar and Singur issues in the common manifesto. The CM, however, made it clear he would highlight Singur in his campaign tours.