patna history and culture experts on friday stressed the need to develop the lesser known historical sites in the state to promote tourism prospects participating at a session on religious cultural heritage of bihar and its tourism prospects filmmaker and sufi scholar muzaffar ali said tourism these days is only limited to commercial aspect peoples sentiments and culture are also an integral part of tourism he said and added movies could play an important role in promoting places and inspiring people to visit them throwing light on the mithila folk art form r k collegemadhubanis prof shrutidhari singh pleaded for developing rural eco tourism there are over 50 big ponds in bihar that are over 500 years old these could be developed into unique pieces of rural eco tourism he said while bodh gaya and few other buddhist sites are well known and preserved heritage of bihar many other sites are not even properly excavated said prof anil kumar of vishwa bharti shanti niketan he gave several examples of sites that were getting destroyed because of neglect such as chaliya parvat lakhisarai unexcavated sites in jamui buddhist sculptures at sultanganj and halfexcavated kesaria stupa believed to be the largest in the world at 150ft representatives of hindu heritage acharya kishore kunal jain heritage sadhvi sampragya sikh heritage satwant singh from amritsar and buddhist heritage benoy behl discussed various circuits of bihar and said religion was only one aspect of tourism even though places of religious interest helped increase footfalls at tourist places