  We present the first experimental giant dipole resonance (GDR) width
systematics, in the temperature region 0.8 $\sim$ 1.2 MeV for $^{201}$Tl, a
near Pb nucleus, to investigate the evolution of the GDR width in shell effect
& pairing dominated region. The extracted GDR widths are well below the
predictions of shell effect corrected thermal shape fluctuation model (TSFM)
and thermal pairing included phonon damping model. A similar behavior of the
GDR width is also observed for $^{63}$Cu measured in the present work and
$^{119}$Sb, measured earlier. This discrepancy is attributed to the GDR induced
quadrupole moment leading to a critical point in the increase of the GDR width
with temperature. We incorporate this novel idea in the phenomenological
description based on the TSFM for a better understanding of the GDR width
systematics for the entire range of mass, spin and temperature.
