A Bahujan Samaj Party corporator in Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh Municipal Corporation has been booked after he insisted on taking his oath to be sworn in in Urdu, PTI reported.

Bharatiya Janata Party corporator Pushpendra Singh filed a complaint against Musharraf Hussain for “trying to outrage religious feelings”. A case was filed under Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, Bannadevi Police Station in-charge Jitendra Dikshit said.

Singh alleged that Hussain had tried to disturb communal harmony on Monday, when he took the oath. Hussain also filed a complaint, claiming that he was beaten up. But Dikshit said the police were looking into his complaint and have not registered a case yet.

Singh said all corporators took the oath of office in Hindi, and the ceremony was “proceeding normally” till Hussain took the oath in Urdu, NDTV reported. “That triggered unpleasant scenes,” Kumar said, adding that it led to a scuffle between BSP and BJP workers.

“Corporators taking the oath in Urdu led to a bad atmosphere,” senior police officer Rajesh Pandey told NDTV. “Taking the oath in Urdu is not illegal, but the police had to intervene after the violence.”

After the incident, Aligarh’s new Mayor Mohammed Furqan, who is from the Bahujan Samaj Party, asked the BJP to “accept defeat with grace and not fuel confrontation on emotive issues as this would derail all development work in the city”.

The BJP won 14 of the 16 mayoral posts in the recent urban body polls in Uttar Pradesh, but lost Aligarh and Meerut to Mayawati’s BSP.