The condition of Ramjanambhoomi Nyas (trust) president Mahant Ramchandra Das Paramhans, who suffered a heart attack on Thursday, was improving but he still not out of danger.
"His condition has become stable since being flown in to Lucknow from Ayodhya on Thursday evening," Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS) Director Dr Mahendra Bhandari told rediff.com on Friday morning.
"Paramhans is responding to treatment. If this continues, he should get a discharge within a week's time," Dr Bhandari said.
However, the hospital's Medical Superintendent Hem Chandra told PTI that though all the organs of the mahant were working satisfactorily, 'Paramhans is still not out of danger and the next 48 hours are crucial'.
The hospital is having a tough time handling the stream of VIP visitors.
Prominent among those who called on Paramhans were Union Minister of State for Home Swami Chinmayanand, UP Bharatiya Janata Party chief Vinay Katiyar, former state BJP president Kalraj Misra and a host of UP ministers, apart from a large band of saffron clad sadhus from Ayodhya.
A native of Bihar, Paramhans made Ayodhya his home in the mid-1930s after he became a Naga sadhu and rose to head the clan's Digambar Akhara.
He shot into the spotlight for the first time when he played a prominent role in the surreptitious operation to install an idol of Lord Ram inside the 16th century Babri mosque in December 1949.
The event, then described as a supernatural one, led to Hindus offering prayers in the mosque that was eventually pulled down by radical Hindus exactly 43 years later in December 1992. The act triggered a countrywide communal frenzy that claimed a few thousand lives.
Apart from being a key litigant in the half-a-century old legal battle over the disputed site, Paramhans had remained at the forefront if each and every development connected with the contentious piece of land.
Radical Hindus have been staking claim to the site, which they say is the birthplace of Lord Ram and in whose honour they wish to erect a grand temple.
At present, there is a makeshift temple at the disputed site, erected hastily in the aftermath of the mosque's demolition.
Muslims, on the other hand, have been demanding reconstruction of the razed mosque.
With inputs from PTI
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