Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Marxist veteran Jyoti Basu at a Kolkata hospital on Thursday and told doctors attending on the Marxist patriarch that he would arrange for any kind of medical help available in the country if required.
The PM was accompanied by Union Finance Minister
Pranab Mukherjee and West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee when he visited Basu in his hospital room.
President Pratibha Patil called Basu’s businessman son Chandan and enquired about the veteran’s condition.
Basu, 96, has been battling bronchial pneumonia for the past week and was put on a ventilator and oxygen mask on Wednesday morning.
An eight-member team of specialists, headed by Basu’s cardiologist and family physician Dr A.K. Maiti, is attending on the former West Bengal chief Minister.
“Basu’s blood pressure is fluctuating though the drugs that stabilise blood pressure have been reduced. He has been put on different kinds of support systems,” Dr Maiti said.
Basu developed problems in the intestine with abdominal pain though his haemoglobin count improved.
Doctors attending on him said his overall condition had not changed since Wednesday, when they said he was in a “very critical condition”.
VVIP movements to the hospital forced cancellation of a soccer match between Churchill Brothers and Mohun Bagan at Salt Lake Stadium, which is less than a kilometre from the hospital.
Basu is the only surviving member of the CPI-M’s first politburo formed in 1964.