Calcutta, Jan. 3: Having taken the maa, mati, manush punch by Mamata Banerjee for long, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today came up with his punchline — krishi, shilpo, manush’’ (agriculture, industry, people).

“The Leftists have all along been with the farmers and their movements in Bengal. But now we find the principal Opposition party talking about maa, mati, manush. What do I say? I would respond to that by saying that we want krishi, shilpo, manush,” the chief minister said, giving the CPM its slogan for the Assembly polls.

Mamata has described her successive poll triumphs since the 2008 rural elections as the victory of her maa, mati, manush, leaving many in the CPM scratching their heads to match her leitmotif.

That search ended today when Bhattacharjee sprang the punchline while addressing a gathering on the occasion of the 45th birthday of CPM organ Ganashakti. “I urge you all to reach out to the people and spread this message and tell them that our party wants both agriculture and industry to flourish. We want to take the people of our state along that course. Our party won’t let the unruly, violent forces like the principal Opposition party take over… Let this be our pledge today.”

According to a CPM state secretariat member, the chief minister coined the slogan to send the message to “lakhs of party cadres’’ that they should use it to drum up support for the elections this summer.

The slogan has an immediate relevance: it will be used to build the tempo for the February 13 Brigade Parade grounds rally of the Left Front. The 40-day campaign for the event begins tomorrow across the state.

But behind the slogan is the chief minister’s attempt to convince voters that his government would not pursue industrialisation (shilpo) at the cost of agriculture (krishi), something that his government has been perceived by his detractors of doing and igniting the wave of land protests. Trinamul is seen as having benefited from the churning.

Bhattacharjee dwelt on the theme today when he asserted that “we have taken lessons from Singur and Nandigram”. “We will have to be very cautious while acquiring land. After Singur, our government has acquired 6,000 acres but after talking to people concerned and the landlosers. That will be the right way.”

But the chief minister accused Trinamul of spreading “false information and distorting facts’’.

First, he spoke of Singur and explained how his plans were derailed there. “We did not choose the land, it was the Tatas who did it. Our objective was to have an automobile industry. But Trinamul began agitating and spreading all sorts of wrong information to scare away landowners. They asked for the return of 400 acres to unwilling farmers, who were merely 5 per cent of the land-losers. We gave an assurance that we would return 100 acres… the factory could not have happened if we had given up 400 acres. We still want industry, preferably automobiles, in Singur.”

On Nandigram, the chief minister said it was not the intention of “my police’’ to march into that place to ensure land acquisition. “However, Trinamul carried out a malicious campaign saying we had brought in the police to acquire land at gunpoint. They began resisting and the police had to fire. Can a Leftist government fire on people? But we were tainted by the Trinamul even without taking an inch of land there.”