Bismillah's crumbling birthplace: Testimony to broken promises in Bihar

"I am sad that Bismillah Khan was not given respect in his home town," Choubey, who was denied a BJP ticket to contest the Lok Sabha polls this time around, told IANS.

Brahmin-dominated Buxar is witnessing a four-cornered contest among incumbent Jagdanand Singh, the BJP's Ashwani Kumar Choubey, the Janata Dal-United's Shyam Lal Kushwaha and the Bahujan Samaj Party's Dadan Yadav.

Some Muslims living near the ancestral house of Bisimillah, where he was born, expressed their unhappiness over its neglect and the double standards of politicians.

"We cannot do anything except express anger and frustration time and again. If Bismillah Khan was born in any other place outside Bihar, it would have developed the house but here, there's no one to care for it," Salim Ansari, who stays near Bismillah Khan's birthplace, told IANS.

Another resident, Sanjit Singh, said there is a road named after Bismillah Khan in Varanasi (where he died) but there is nothing in his name at his birthplace.