Ignoring the rivalry between the Left Front and the Congress in the imminent West Bengal Assembly elections, Congress and and Union defence minister Pranab Mukherjee and West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee spoke in unison and in the same language to workers in the industrial region of Haldia in Bengal.

Brushing aside their political and ideological differences, Bhattacharjee and Mukherjee told workers clearly that they had to work in harmony with the management of companies operating in Haldia or setting up plants there.

At Haldia, Bhattacharjee inaugurated the truck unit of Russia's Ural and therafter laid the foundation stone of the sugar refinery to be built by Shree Renuka Sugars and the plant of Hooghly Met Coke & Power Co, a joint venture coke project of Tata Steel and West Bengal and Industrial Development Corporation.

The tag line used for justifying the stance was the need to provide employment and jobs for the youth.

Addressing workers at Ural India Ltd, Bhattacharjee said the responsibility of making the venture a success was not just the onus of the management - it was as much on the workers as on the management.

"Workers and the management will have to work together" he said. Pranab Mukherjee echoed these views and said that the state must move forward and Haldia was a symbol of progress.

"The chief minister has rightly and adequately responded to the changing times," he said.

Bhattacharjee was also quick to acknowledge the importance of the Left Front vote bank, stating that while the state wanted factories to be set up, it would look after people displaced by factories. Bhattacharjee explained to workers that with such projects, farmers would get a better price for their produce.

Mukherjee urged Renuka Sugars not just to refine sugar in Haldia but to consider producing it from sugar cane or processing it so that farmers benefited.