Soumya Swaminathan in sole lead in Nat'l Junior Girls chess

New Delhi,Aug 26 (UNI) Defending champion Soumya Swaminathan (Maharashtra) defeated Sahel Nath (Bengal) to emerge as the sole leader in the fifth round of the Parsvnath 21st National Junior Girls chess championship here today.

With her fifth victory on the trot, Soumya made sure she remained ahead of nearest rival and top seed WIM Kruttika Nadig (Karnataka) who defeated National Women's B champion Supriya Maji(Bengal) with awesome ease.

Soumya, with five points in her bag, is half a point adrift of Kruttika. There are seven players behind these two with an identical score of 4 points.

In the Parsvnath 35 National Junior championship, Grandmaster norm holder and top seed Abhijeet Gupta(BP) was held to a draw by second seed International Master norm holder G Rohit(AP) after a tense struggle.

Third seed Women Grandmaster D Harika (AP) gave ample evidence of her strong positional sense before dispatching B Adhiban(TN) Nadu to join the leading group of 4.5 pointers.

The lead in this section is now shared by Abhijeet, Rohit, former champion G N Gopal, Soumitra Majumdar and Harika with each having 4.5 points. A pack of 11 players including Tamil Nadu's S P Sethuraman are in joint sixth spot having 4 points apiece.

Five more rounds remain in the open section while in girls' championship just four matches are left.

UNI HSB DH RS1703