New Delhi: Tejas Bakre was officially awarded the Grandmaster title by Fide, at a presidential board meeting held in Tripoli during the World Chess Championship last week. And Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury became an IM.

Conveying this confirmation, Fide vice-president and AIGF secretary P. T. Ummer Koya said Tuesday: “Tejas becomes the 11th Grandmaster of the country. I think we are very much on target for 100 Grandmasters by 2012, the main aim of AICF.”

There were also three big gainers among women. Swati Ghate, S. Meenakshi and Dronavalli Harika were awarded their Women Grandmaster’s titles and they now join S. Vijayalakshmi, Aarthie Ramaswamy and Nisha Mohota.

Tejas was conferred the title on the basis of his performance in the second Parsvnath International Open chess tournament here in March where he completed the formality of attaining 2500 elo rating.

M. R. Venkatesh, R. R. Laxman, Vishal Sareen and Saptarshi were awarded IM titles. Sameer Mallick of Calcutta was conferred the title of international arbiter.

Sasikiran wins

Meanwhile, Krishnan Sasikiran came up with some strong positional chess to humble Yannick Pelletier of Switzerland in the first round of the Grandmasters section of the 27th Biel chess festival on Tuesday.