India, Nov. 9 -- An offhand remark by a Shiv Sena legislator has set tongues wagging about the party and its rival, the Shiv Sena (UBT), particularly his reference to the two sides "coming together".

"I don't know whether the two will come together but I had said, on day one when the Shiv Sena split, that such a thing should never have happened. If Uddhav Thackeray and Eknath Shinde come together, it would be a real Diwali,' Sena MLC Chandrakant Raghuvanshi told the media on Sunday.

The word "merger" is currently a hot-button topic in Maharashtra's political circles, with talk of the widely anticipated reunion of the two factions of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) surfacing yet again. Raghuvanshi admitted that his wish for the two ...