Shahnawaz Hussain, a former Union minister and former Bihar minister, has been denied a ticket to contest the Bihar assembly election by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
"Shahnawaz Hussain's name is missing in the BJP list of candidates. He will not contest the polls again," a BJP leader close to him said.
The BJP will contest 101 of Bihar's 243 assembly seats this election. The party announced its candidates late on Wednesday night, but did not field any Muslim candidate again.
BJP sources said it is part of the partys strategy not to field any Muslim candidate in the Bihar polls like neighbouring Uttar Pradesh.
Shahnawaz Hussain won the Bhagalpur Lok Sabha seat in 2009. He had won the Lok Sabha election from Kishanganj, a Muslim-dominated seat in Bihar, in 1999. He was inducted as a Cabinet minister in the then National Democratic Alliance government led by prime minister Atal Bijhari Vajpayee.
-- M I Khan in Patna