SANGLI, MAY 17: Rahul Shetty (6.5) of Indian Airlines shot into lead with an easy win over Ram Kumar Mishra (5.5) of Madhya Pradesh at the end of the 7th round of the S K Vaidya Memorial International Rating Chess Tournament here today.

Top seed P Konguvel (5) and hot favourite N Sudhakar Babu (5) went out of contention after suffering shocking defeats at the hands of PDS Girinath (6) and Kiran Panditrao (6) respectively.

Rahul's active pieces harassed their black counterparts in Alekhine defence employed by Mishra. In the middle game, Mishra was about to lose a pawn when he decided to give up a piece for counterplay. Rahul made clever use of the far advanced pawn to pocket the point after 49 moves.

Former junior National champion Jayant Gokhale (6) scored a marathon win over last night leader TS Ravi (5.5) in Queen's Indian Defence.

Girinath (6) had recently defeated Konguvel in the last round of National championship. He repeated the same performaance by using the same opening the King's Indian Attack and Konguvel resigned after 45 moves.

Kiran Panditrao scored a facile victory over Babu in Modern Benoni defence. Babu played listlessly and allowed too much activity to the black pieces. Kiran's attack was lethal and swift. He won a piece in Babu's time trouble and forced the International Master to surrender in 40 moves.

In a duel between youngsters, Roktim Bandopadhyay (6) of Bengal was lucky to beat N Sanjay (5) of Karnataka in 39 moves of King's Indian Defence. GB Prakash (5.5) of Indian Bank had an easy win over Moti Ram (5) of Rajasthan in Dutch defence.

International Masters Sharad Tilak (5) and Ravi Hegde (4.5) were held to draws by unseeded Vedant Goswamy (5) and Pankaj Pendalwar (4.5) respectively.

National women champion Anupama Gokhale (5) of BPCL had no difficulty in overcoming Moeezuddin (4) in French Defence.

Important results (7th round): Rahul Shetty (6.5) bt R K Mishra (5.5), R Bandopadhyay (6) bt N Sanjay (5), Gopalkrishna (5) draw V Sarvanan (5) D Rajpur (4.5) lost to Anup Deshmukh (5.5), Yogesh Gore (5.5) bt Sajandas Joshi (4.5), S Kidambi (5.5) bt Atanu Lahiri (4), Manthan Choksi (4) lost to Arun Vaidya (5), Wazir Khan (4.5) draw L G Sharma (4.5), S K Udupa (5) bt N Neelakantan (4), Vivek Shukla (4) lost to Raghuraman (5), KL Dave (5) bt P Golecha (4), V Solanki (4) lost to V Chole (5).