Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday said that the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Karnataka and Maharashtra governments will not make any claim in the border dispute between them until the Supreme Court gives its verdict in the case, reported ANI.

Shah met with Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai and Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde as tensions have been rising due to the decades-long dispute.

Since its creation on May 1, 1960, Maharashtra has demanded that 865 villages, including Belgaon (now Belgavi), Karwar and Nippani, that lie within Karnataka border, should be merged with it.

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The Supreme Court is hearing a plea by the Maharashtra government on the border dispute.

“Three ministers from each of these two states will sit together and discuss about making detailed percolation in this matter,” the home minister told reporters after the meeting on Wednesday. “The committee will be headed by a senior Indian Police Service officer to ensure constitutional norms are followed and law and order is maintained in both states.”

He also urged Opposition parties in Karnataka and Maharashtra to not politicise the matter. “We should wait for the outcome of the discussions of the committee formed to resolve this issue and the decision of the Supreme Court,” Shah said. “I am confident that Nationalist Congress Party, Congress, and the Uddhav Thackeray group will cooperate.”

Over the last few weeks, tensions flared up after activists from the Karnataka Rakshana Vedika, a Kannada nationalist group, allegedly attacked buses and lorries from Maharashtra near Belagavi by pelting stones. In retaliation to the attack on vehicles registered in Maharashtra, workers from former Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s faction of the Shiv Sena also defaced Karnataka’s state transport buses in Pune.