NEW YORK (TIP): India‘s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is among 50 global leaders, business chiefs and pop icons named as contenders by Time magazine for its annual ‘Person of the Year’ honor. Time has asked its readers to vote for the individual who they think should get the title of Person of the Year and the winner of the readers’ choice poll will be announced in December before Time’s editors choose the individual from the 50 candidates as the honoree.

Modi has so far got 3.8% of the votes, the fourth highest after Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai and doctors and nurses “risking lives to treat Ebola”. The Time ‘Person of the Year 2014’ will be announced in December and the publication said the title will be “bestowed to those who have, for good or for ill, most influenced the news and our lives in the past year”. Describing Modi as “once a controversial regional leader”, Time said he became India’s Prime Minister after leading his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a “landslide electoral victory on a platform of economic development”.