Former UNESCO head to finalize 21 wonders list

VISHAL SHARMA
INDIA (AGRA), 14 DEC. Barely a fortnight of its "official" nomination to the "New 7 Wonders" list, the world famous Mughal Monument Taj Mahal is all set to create a record by capturing more than 97 per cent of all votes registered on the www.n7w.com website over the past week.

Federico Mayor Zaragoza, a former director general at the UNESCO, has been appointed the presiding judge on the N7W expert panel that shall finally select the 21 contenders for this list, officially taking up his appointment this Tuesday, December 14th, at a formal function organized in Madrid, Spain.

In a press release issued by N7W on Tuesday, Bernard Weber, the New 7 Wonders Foundation Chairman said that the huge expertise and experience of Mr Mayor sets the standard for the final stage of voting in this important campaign and following the appointment of Mr. Mayor, the names of other judges to feature in the experts panel shall be announced soon.

On this occasion, Sarah Yuen, New 7 Wonders Head of Communication said that the nomination of the Taj Mahal on the New 7 Wonders list by Former Miss World Aishwarya Rai has received overwhelming response from Indians living all over the world and more than 50 thousand votes have been cast in favour of the Taj in the past week.

She said that this call for votes made by Aishwarya also sparked an influx of nominations for another Indian treasure and lately, the website was being flooded with nominations for the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai and hundreds of people have written to her, asking for it to be listed. She said that due to the tremendous demand of the people, the Meenakshi Temple is now one of the officially nominated wonders on the website and people have already begun voting for it, making it the second wonder on this week's list.

But despite the mass voting response throughout India and the world, the Taj Mahal still has some way to go to catch up with The Great Wall of China, still adamantly holding on to the top spot. The Great Wall has 11 per cent of the overall vote cast so far on this website, as opposed to the Taj Mahal which is at the third position overall with six per cent votes.

The voting for all nominated wonders will remain open until February 28th 2005, when an international panel of experts will select just 21 sites to go forward to the final stage of the campaign. The historic announcement will be made in a worldwide telecast on January 1 2006.
(UNITED NEWS NETWORK)

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