New York: Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi won the online reader's poll for Time 'Person of the Year 2016', he was ranked among the top 10 most powerful people in the world by Forbes.
The list has been topped by Russian President Vladimir Putin for a fourth straight year and had US President-elect Donald Trump in the second place.
PM Modi ranks 9th on the Forbes list of 74 of the World's Most Powerful People.
Forbes said India's 'populist' PM remains hugely popular in his country of 1.3 billion people.
To quote the magazine - "India's populist prime minister remains hugely popular in his country of 1.3 billion people. In November 2016 he unexpectedly announced plans to eliminate India's two largest bank notes in a bid to reduce money laundering and corruption, creating a nationwide frenzy to quickly swap out the bills. Modi has raised his profile as a global leader in recent years during official visits with Barack Obama and Xi Jinping. He has also emerged as a key figure in the international effort to tackle climate change, as planetary warming will deeply affect millions of his country's rural and most vulnerable citizens."
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama comes in on the 48th spot.
"There are nearly 7.4 billion humans on planet Earth, but these 74 men and women make the world turn. Forbes' annual ranking of the World's Most Powerful People identifies one person out of every 100 million whose actions mean the most," it said.
Forbes said Russia's 64-year-old president has exerted his country's influence in nearly every corner of the globe; from the motherland to Syria to the US presidential elections, continuing to "get what he wants".
The list includes Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani on the 38the spot. Forbes said the 59-year-old oil and gas tycoon sparked a price war in India's hyper competitive telecom market with the launch of 4G phone service Jio at the annual shareholder meeting of his Reliance Industries in September.
"The USD 44.7 billion (revenue) Reliance Industries is locked in a legal battle with the government related to the recovery of costs associated with developing a gas field," it said, adding that his wife Nita, who sits on Reliance's board, is a member of the International Olympic Committee, as per PTI.
The list also includes Microsoft's India-born CEO Satya Nadella on the 51st spot, with Forbes saying the 49-year-old has steered the company away from a failing mobile strategy and focused on other lines of business, including cloud computing and augmented reality.
The third most powerful person in the world also happens to be the most powerful woman: Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany and the backbone of the European Union.
The list includes Xi on the 4th spot, Pope Francis (5), Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (7), Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (10), French President Francois Hollande (23), Apple CEO Tim Cook (32), North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (43) and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (57).
On December 05, PM Modi had won the online reader's poll for TIME Person of the Year 2016, beating out other world leaders like Trump, incumbent Obama and Vladimir Putin.
He had won with 18 percent of the vote, getting significantly more votes than his closest contenders, including Obama, Trump and Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange, who all received 7 percent of the 'yes' vote.
PM Modi was also placed far ahead of other prominent figures of this year, like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (2 percent) and US Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton (4 percent), Time had said.
Time had said the reader poll is an "important window" into who they think most shaped 2016.
It was for the second time that PM Modi won the online readers' poll for Time Person of the Year title, securing the honour in 2014, when he had got more than 16 percent of the almost five million votes cast.
Later Trump was chosen as Time's final Person of the Year for 2016.
Last year German Chancellor Angela Merkel was Time's 'Person of the Year'.
(With Agency inputs)
