Kolkata, March 27 (PTI): Admitting for the first time in the backdrop of the Nandigram incident that the CPI-M had failed to foresee the strong public reaction to the Left Front government's bid to acquire farm land for industries, party partriarch Jyoti Basu has advocated a cautious approach in the matter.

"We had not forseen the strong public reaction. We should have tried to convince the people beforehand. We should have tried to raise their consciousness. There was some misunderstanding. But the misunderstandings will be overcome," the 93-year-old Marxist leader was today quoted as saying in an interview to the CPI-M organ Ganshakti.

Basu, who backed the CPI-M's allies and forced Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to climb down on the issue of acquiring land for industries in Nandigram, reiterated the need to industrialise the state but called for a cautious approach in this regard.

"Now that a land map has been prepared we will have to go by that map to avoid any trouble in future," he said.