The TIME person of the year is a highly anticipated listing every year. It has evolved into a bit of a tradition over the last nine decades. While personalities ranging from the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Barack Obama to people like Ayatollah Khomeini, Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler have made it to the top spot, groups of people like “American Women” and “The Whistle-blowers” have also been named as person of the year.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and Google’s India-born CEO Sundar Pichai are among over 50 global leaders, business chiefs and pop icons named as contenders by Time magazine for its annual ‘Person of the Year’ honour. The Time Person of the Year 2015 will be announced next month and the publication said the title will be bestowed on the person who “most influenced the news this year for better or worse.”
Modi has so far got 1.3% of the votes, the same as Pichai and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The other candidates in the fray for the Person of the Year title include US President Barack Obama, French President Francois Hollande, Chinese President Xi Jinping, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Democratic Presidential front runner Hillary Clinton, the refugees fleeing conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and East and West Africa, Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, Tesla head Elon Musk, Apple CEO Tim Cook and last year’s winner Pope Francis.