News Makers of 2019

Who were the people in the spotlight in the year 2019? Let's take a look at some of the big newsmakers of the year gone by.

Greta Thunberg

On the international scene, this teen environmental activist from Sweden made waves and the world was forced to pay attention to her. She was nominated person of the year 2019 by the TIME magazine. Thunberg gained global recognition for her forthright views on climate change which she has repeatedly described as the climate crisis. The expression, 'climate strike' in the Colliers English dictionary is attributed to her. She addressed the UN Climate Action Summit and was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Thunberg has been nudging governments to act on the major environmental crises afflicting humanity and her influence is already being described as the 'Greta Thunberg effect'.

Boris Johnson

U.K.'s current prime minister won a landslide victory and became the premiere in July this year and is seen by many as Britain's man for the moment. His big win is sure to help him push his agenda for Brexit.

K. Sivan

Closer home, the chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), earned wider accolades for spearheading the Chandrayaan-2 mission. The image of the renowned space scientist and ISRO chairman breaking down when Prime Minister Narendra Modi hugged him after the failure of the mission, will stay in the minds of many an Indian for a long time.

Amit Shah

BJP's strong man became Union Home Minister after the 2019 general elections. Along with Prime Minister Modi, he oversaw the revocation of article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir. Shah is referred to as 'Loh Purush' or iron man, by his admirers in BJP. He now faces his biggest challenge in handling protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) across the country.

Uddhav Thackeray

The Shiv Sena chief broke away from election ally BJP and formed a coalition with the Congress and Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to become Maharashtra chief minister towards the end of November. Political analysts are keeping their fingers crossed on the way forward for Uddhav who is currently trying to effect a smooth cabinet expansion without ruffling alliance partners' feathers.

Hemant Soren

The chief minister-designate of Jharkhand spearheaded the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha's (JMM) spectacular performance in the recently concluded elections. He stitched up a successful poll pact with the Congress and RJD and became chief minister after the alliance victory. JMM emerged as the single largest party though his party got only 18.72% of the vote share as compared to BJP's 33.37%.