Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray's condition showing improvement, say party leaders

MUMBAI: The condition of Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, who is critically ill, was showing some improvement, senior party leaders said this evening.

"He is showing some signs of improvement," was the terse reply of Sena leader and former Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi to reporters' query outside the Thackeray residence `Matoshree' in suburban Bandra.

MP and Sena spokesperson Sanjay Raut said earlier that there was some improvement in 86-year-old Thackeray's condition and he had been taken off the life-support system.

"Yesterday definitely there was some problem. Balasaheb is (now) stable and responding to treatment and is off-life support system," Raut said.

Perhaps in an indication of improvement in Sena patriarch's health, the Diwali decoration lights at the party headquarters `Sena Bhavan' in Dadar were turned on in the evening.

Security has been beefed up around Matoshree as well as in the city following yesterday's incidents in which Shiv Sainiks damaged some media vehicles and equipment.

Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan is monitoring the law and order situation.

Politicians, film personalities and captains of industry made a beeline for `Matoshree' through the day.

Union Minister Sharad Pawar, BJP chief Nitin Gadkari, party's deputy leader in the Lok Sabha Gopinath Munde, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh, actors Salman Khan and Sanjay Dutt, filmmakers Madhur Bhandarkar and Ashok Pandit and industrialists Rahul Bajaj and Venugopal Dhoot visited `Matoshree' to inquire about Thackeray's condition.

Thackeray's daughter-in-law Smita Thackeray too visited in the evening.

His estranged nephew and MNS chief Raj Thackeray was at the Thackeray residence most of the time during the day.