The Election Commission has begun an inquiry into an allegation by the BJP that the party has purportedly been branded as communal in a class IX text book in Left Front-ruled Tripura.

"We have received a complaint from BJP here and asked the state education department to file a report on the allegation. After receiving the report, we would send it to the EC for appropriate action," chief electoral officer Asutosh Jindal said.

Prasenjit Chakraborty, convener of BJP's Intellectual Cell here, complained to chief election commissioner V S Sampath on Sunday that the Bengali medium political science book, in its chapter on 'India's party system', said one of the important characteristics of this system was the existence of communal parties.

"Muslim League, Hindu Mahasabha and Shiv Sena are among such parties, besides BJP. Parties like the BJP, though not based on religion, succeeded in capturing power through communalisation of politics," the book purportedly said.

Chakraborty also claimed that on the basis of the book, a school here recently set a question for students to identify the communal party from four parties - Congress, CPI-M, BJP and BSP.The party demanded immediate action against the guilty.