Abhishek Banerjee on Friday chaired an internal meeting of Trinamul Congress leaders and exhorted them to go all out against the BJP in the general election, which he purportedly said would be of “resistance and revenge”.

The closed-door virtual meeting was the first mainstream statewide political activity by the MP after a four-month hiatus.

At the meeting, conspicuously attended by some notable members of the so-called old guard he shares testy ties with, chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew stressed the core themes of the campaign for their party: Swanirbhor Bangla (self-reliant Bengal); vote for work, not in the name of Ram; and the BJP-led Centre’s step-motherly treatment of the state.

“He said there is no time left to waste and we should get to it at once,” said a leader who attended the Trinamul national general secretary’s meeting with senior leaders, MPs, MLAs, and block presidents.

“‘Jomidari hatao, Bangla bnachao (Out with feudalism, save Bengal),’ he said…. He kept harping on the need to make people understand how much damage has been done by the deprivation of Bengal caused by the BJP-led Centre’s politics of vendetta,” he added. “He said this would be an election of resistance and revenge against the saffron juggernaut, and we must pull out all the stops now.”

At the meeting, Abhishek spoke at length on the theme of Swanirbhor Bangla — Bengal becoming increasingly self-reliant under Mamata’s single-engine government — which was an obvious jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s concepts of double-engine governments (BJP-led governments at both the state and the Centre and Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India, an umbrella concept for the Centre’s plans to make the nation more efficient, competitive, and resilient).