The night is almost here — the Coronation night of one of the biggest and most prestigious beauty pageants in the world, Miss World 2017.
118 participants have gathered in China to compete for the coveted crown. And on Saturday, November 18th; the world will get the 67th Miss World.
Nikita Chandak, who is representing Nepal this year, has been doing exceptionally well. With the Head to Head Challenge win, the 20-year-old has already made her way into the Top 40. For the challenge that has been introduced this year, all the participants were divided into 20 groups with 5 or 6 girls in each of them. Chandak was a part of Group 3 along with Belgium, Cameroon, Guinea, Madagascar and Chile. After the video of the group was released on YouTube, the voting was opened to public. With the most number of votes on Miss World’s website, Mobstar and Facebook; she was announced the winner.
The results of eight Head to Head challenge groups have been announced so far. Apart from Nepal; Italy, Argentina, France, Colombia, Bangladesh, Macau China and Mongolia from Groups 1,2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 have been announced the winners, respectively. The winners for other 12 groups are yet to be announced and the voting is still open.
Along with the 20 winners of the Head to Head Challenge; 5 other winners of fast-track challenges — Multimedia, Talent, Top Model, Sports and Beauty With A Purpose — too will directly win their spots in the Top 40. The other 15 participants will be selected by the judges.
Nikita Chandak was able to be in the Top 30 of the Top Model fast track challenge as well. Nigeria had emerged to be the winner of the challenge. Dominican Republic and Malta have won the Sports and Talent challenges, respectively and are in the Top 40. On the other hand, the results of two other challenges — Beauty With A Purpose (BWAP) and Multimedia — are yet to be announced. While Chandak’s BWAP project ‘Let’s Be Period Positive’ has already been announced as one of the 20 semi-finalists; the problem is — Manushi Chillar (India)’s project is extremely similar, and she too is one of the semi-finalists in the fast track. With both the contestants’ projects on the same cause — against menstruation taboos and spreading awareness — it would be a tough call for the judges to choose one among them and hence, they might consider choosing from the projects of other eighteen semi-finalists.
Nikita’s Project:
Manushi’s Project:
Technically, it won’t be a big deal for Nikita even if she doesn’t win this fast-track challenge as winning it would take her to the Top 40; and she already is there. But then again, ‘Beauty With A Purpose’ is the soul of the Miss World pageant and it’s its very motto as well. So winning it is actually important.
Now, coming to the last fast-track challenge, Multimedia, Nikita is one of the strongest contenders to win it. She has a good number of followers on Mobstar — the most important contributor to the Multimedia challenge this year — keeping in mind that Facebook is barred in the host country, China.
And now, rumor has it that the winner of the special award, People’s Choice, will directly be making it to the Top 15. We’re calling it a rumor for now as there hasn’t been any official announcement regarding it by the Miss World organization. But Nikita has been appealing to vote for her.
“I am one of the TOP 40 finalists. Next would be TOP 15 which would be announced on the day itself. Among the TOP 15, one would be the PEOPLE’S CHOICE. I have found out from other contestants through the votes on missworld.com, I can get into TOP 15 directly. So, please vote for me on missworld site”, she wrote in an Instagram post.
Now, quite interestingly, the voting on the Miss World website was opened for the Head to Head Challenge. And before announcing the winners of Groups 1 to 8, the voting was officially closed.
But looks like the voting is still open on the website, even for those eight groups; and nobody, except the organization, accurately knows what exactly is it for as there hasn’t been an official announcement about this ‘People’s Choice’ award and winning a spot in the Top 15.
Anyway, if it’s open, you should vote for her. You never know, the People’s Choice thing can actually be real. And more importantly, follow Nikita on Mobstar and keep liking and commenting on her posts there. It’s important.
Nikita Chandak is one of the strongest Nepali representatives in the Miss World pageant so far. Will she be able to bring Nepal its first ever Miss World crown? If that happens, it would be Nepal’s first win in any of the Big 5 pageants (Miss Universe, Miss World, Miss Earth, Miss International, Miss Supranational).
