Thekjumar leads with facile victories.

Karantaka's National "A" player M.S. Thejkumar (ELO 2336) was one of the leaders after the third round in the National "B" after beating Rajesh Diwan (2142) in the second round and veteran V. Hariharan (2205) in the third round here at the Karnavati Club, Ahmedabad. Thejkumar, who finished fourth in the extremely strong field of the Smt. Hirabai Salgaocar Memorial in Goa, will now be fancying his chances to finish in the top 30 and qualify for the National "A" to be held later this year in Rajkot.

His statemate Naveen Hegde (2116) was not so lucky as he went down fighting to Praveen Kumar (2323) in the second round. Hegde had given a good account of himself in Malleshwaram where he had finished fifth in the Karnataka State Championship. Karnataka youngster Sriram Sarja (2257) lost to IM Lanka Ravi (2390) after a bitter struggle in the third round.

There were major upsets as well as IM Deep Sengupta (2420), G. Rohit (2399) and IM R.R. Laxman (2390) seeded three, seven and ten respectively were beaten by Vikas Sharma (2180), Moti Ram (2173) and Virender Singh Negi (2175) in that order, on the leading boards in the second round. In the third round the shocks continued as International Masters V. Saravanan (2383), R. Balasubramanium (2354) and Himanshu Sharma (2386) lost to Laltu Chatterjee (2242), Aswin Jayaram (2078) and Akshat Khamparia (2242) respectively.