Pune, Jul 9 (IANS): Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi President Prakash Ambedkar underwent an emergency heart surgery at a Pune hospital, a party official said on Friday.

"Adv. Prakash Ambedkar has undergone an emergency heart bypass surgery on Thursday. He is presently shifted to the intensive care unit," VBA state in-charge President Rekha Thakur said this evening.

She added that the condition of the Dalit leader - the grandson of the Chief Architect of the Indian Constitution Dr. B. R. Ambedkar - is "stable" and the doctors attending to him have assured there is no cause for worries.

The 67-year-old Ambedkar's wife, Anjali, some other family members and a few party leaders are with Ambedkar at the hospital - the name of which has not been disclosed to avoid crowds gathering there.

The development came barely hours after Ambedkar issued a video statement on Thursday announcing that he would "keep off VBA duties" for a period of three months for certain "personal reasons" which he did not reveal, and VBA leaders also kept mum on the sudden developments.

He had appointed Thakur and a team of others to handle the party affairs in his absence and solicited all party activists to extend their cooperation to them, including for some of the local bodies elections that could be scheduled in the state over the next few months.