A frail-looking Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav addressed his first political meeting in a long time and castigated the Narendra Modi government at the Centre and Nitish Kumar administration in Bihar for their "many failures" and predicted that a bright future awaits his own party under his son Tejashwi Yadav.

Appearing on national television to mark the silver jubilee of the party he founded in 1997 after breaking away from the Janata Dal, Prasad, who is suffering from many ailments and convalescing at his MP daughter Misa Bharti's residence in New Delhi recalled his struggles for OBC quota and the fight for the rights of the weaker sections. The snappy wisecracks were missing from the speech he delivered virtually for scores of RJD workers and leaders at the party's state headquarters in Patna who were waiting for a glimpse of their leader for a long time since his incarceration after conviction in the fodder scam.