India, June 20 -- Union home minister and BJP leader Amit Shah, addressing a public gathering in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, on Saturday, said what the Eknath Shinde camp had been building toward for four years. "Earlier, people had to say 'Shiv Sena-Shinde faction' after Eknath Shinde ji's name," Shah said, speaking in Hindi. "Now no faction remains anymore... there is only one Shiv Sena."

The remark came as six of nine Lok Sabha MPs of Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena (UBT) skipped a parliamentary meeting in Delhi, and submitted a letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla seeking to form a separate grouping. Merger into the Shinde-led Shiv Sena is expected to be formalised imminently, and thus support to the BJP-led NDA regime at the Centre led by P...