By IANS,
Dhaka : Bangladesh has closed down four websites accused of cheating to keep two of the country’s best tourism destinations, Cox’s Bazar and the Sundarbans, in the race for recognition as among the “Seven Natural Wonders” of the world.
The state-run Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation (BPC), which shut down the websites, also called for legal action, The Daily Star newspaper reported.
The organiser of the new seven wonders of nature competition, New7Wonders Foundation, had charged Sep 3 that some websites were arranging multiple votes for the two tourist favourites using single email addresses.
The two destinations were restored Wednesday to their respective first and second places in the tourism race, a week after they were dropped from the list on charges of vote manipulation.
“We worked relentlessly contacted the organisers and took necessary measures to bring Cox’s Bazar and the Sundarbans back in the race again,” BPC chairman Shafique Alam Mehedi told The Daily Star newspaper.
The Bangladesh Tourism Promotion Association had earlier blamed the indifference and failures on the part of the government, the BPC and Orascom Telecom Bangladesh Ltd (Banglalink), official sponsor for Cox’s Bazar, for the cheating.
The Sundarbans, straddling both Bangladesh and India, is one of the largest mangrove forests in the world and is home to the Royal Bengal tiger.
Cox’s Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh is one of the world’s longest beaches.
The tourism industry expects a boom in foreign tourists if the two places, or either of them, hits the final list of nature’s new seven wonders, to be announced in 2010.