MUMBAI: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has been chosen Gujarati magazine Chitralekha's Person of the Year 2005, while Indian skipper Rahul Dravid has received the top honour in the sports category.
  
Chitralekha, the highest-circulated Gujarati news-cum-features weekly with a wide reach among Gujaratis living in India and abroad, has instituted the awards from this year.
  
The magazine said that a comprehensive list of the achievers, who have consistently displayed excellence in their chosen fields, was prepared through an independent survey among a cross section of people from Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Vadodara and Surat.
 
Modi is closely followed by tennis sensation Sania Mirza and megastar Amitabh Bachchan.
 
The survey, conducted among a large sample size of the Gujarati-speaking people spread across Mumbai as well as Gujarat, indicates that 49 per cent of the Gujarat-based voters preferred Modi as their first choice. He, however, managed 17 per cent votes in Mumbai, which has a large Gujarati-speaking population.
 
Sania scored 11 per cent and 32 per cent votes in Gujarat and Mumbai respectively. The Shahenshaah of Bollywood obtained 20 per cent from Gujarat and 21 per cent from Mumbai.
  
In the Sports Person of 2005 category, Rahul 'The Wall' Dravid was the winner, closely followed by Sania and Vadodara speedster Irfan Pathan.
  
One of the questions in the survey sought to know whom the voters thought would be Person of the Year-2006. The voters offered a peep into the future by making their choices clear for 2006 as well.
 
According to them, actor Abhishek Bachchan, who had a string of successes in 2005, will emerge as Person of the Year-2006, with Shah Rukh Khan and Dravid following.
  
Awards were also declared in films and business categories.
 
The choices of Filmperson of the Year and the Businessperson of the Year were unanimous with Amitabh Bachchan and Anil Ambani sweeping the votes in the categories.