Prime Minister Narendra Modi scripted history once again as he was declared ‘world’s most powerful person 2019’ by British Herald Magazine.
For the first time, an Indian leader is dominating the world stage. Indian Prime Minister beat the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump to become the ‘World’s Most Powerful Person 2019’ in the reader’s poll conducted by UK-based British Herald magazine.
Narendra Modi was recently declared Facebook’s most popular leader with 44 million likes and Donald Trump follows next on the list with more than 23 million likes.
Narendra Modi will be featured on the cover page of the July 15 edition of the magazine which previously featured New Zealand’s PM Jacinda Ardern in the May-June issue and Putin in its March-April issue.
“More than 25 world icons were in the nomination list and a judging panel of experts named four final candidates for the prestigious title,” the British Herald magazine mentioned in an article.
“Unlike regular voting system, the British Herald readers had to vote through a mandatory one-time password (OTP) process to validate their vote. Surprisingly, while the voting was on, our website crashed as many voters were trying to vote for their preferred leaders, generating about three million hits in a week,” the magazine said.
The poll which came to a close on Saturday night declared PM Narendra Modi to be the winner with 30.9% of the votes just ahead of Putin (29.9%), Xi (21.9%) and Trump at 18.1%.
The website got crashed during the time of voting owing to an increase in traffic as people checked the website to vote for their favourite leader.
The website got as many as 3 million hits during the time of poll.
The voting page on the magazine’s website garnered as many as 2.5 million hits in the first week of June itself.
“Modi raised his profile as a world leader in recent years during official visits with U.S. President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. He has emerged as a key figure in the Asian region who is seen active with his act east policy.
His effort to tackle climate change has been seen positively by the world, as warming affects millions of his country’s rural citizens,” the British Herald wrote in the article declaring Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the winner of the poll.