In the Open section, top seed Praggnanandhaa R defeated IM Pranav Anand to join overnight sole leader Leon Luke Mendonca and four others in the leaders board.

Pragganandhaa and Mendonca now have the company of compatriot Karthikeyan Murali, Harsha Bharathakoti, Turkmenistan Grandmaster Maksat Atabayev and International Master Koustav Chatterjee are sharing the lead with three and half points.

On top board Mendonca showed great defensive skill to hold second seed Narayanan S L while Karthikeyan Murali outwitted Aditya Mittal in a fine crafted play with a pair of bishops.

Harsha Bharthakoti joined the leaders after capitalizing crucial errors made by his compatriot Sandipan Chanda while Koustav Chatterjee had a lucky escape against Kazakh No. 1 Grandmaster Rinat Jumabayev to secure full point from the outing.

The lone non-Indian among the leaders, Atabayev got the better of Grandmaster Aryan Chopra in a long battle that ended after 90 moves.

In other important encounters in the Women’s section, Nandhidhaa P V beat Vantika Agrawal while Vietnamese Women Grandmaster Vo Thi Kim Phung defeated Liya Kurmangaliyeva to be at joint leaders position along with Priyanka, Nandhidhaa and Soumya Swaminathan, who beat Thi Mai Hung Nguyen of Vietnam in the fourth round encounter.