India, June 28 -- Industries minister Uday Samant on Saturday dismissed suggestions that the BJP was engineering defections from the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT), claiming that leaders and workers were joining the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena voluntarily.

"They have been saying the same thing for the last four years, but six MLAs have joined us. The municipal president also joined us yesterday. We do not have to carry out any Operation Tiger; people from UBT automatically join us," Samant told reporters on the sidelines of the Maharashtra MSME Summit & Awards in Navi Mumbai.

Operation Tiger is the BJP's name for the mission to lure members of rival parties, and was recently used by deputy CM Eknath Shinde and CM Devendra Fadnavis...