Needing only a draw to win the championship, Nisha, who played the English opening, offered Chitra Sridhar (Kar) a draw after 10 moves which the latter accepted.

Tamil Nadu's MR Sangeetha, who also secured 7.5 points, finished runner-up as her progressive score was one point less than Nisha's 38.

Brief results: Nisha Mohota (WB) 7.5 drew with Chitra Sridhar (Kar) 6; MR Sangeetha (TN) 7.5 bt Manasi Dadarkar (Mah) 6; Eesha Karvade (Mah) 5.5 lost to Neha Singh (Bih) 6.5; P Sivakami (TN) 6.5 bt Shradha Samani (Mah) 5.5; Swati Ghate (Mah) 5 lost to R Aarthie (TN) 6; Thelma Gopal (Ker) 5 lost to Pallavi Shah (Mah) 6.

Karthik stuns Tejas

Jalandhar: Three Tamil Nadu players led by Sasikiran shared the lead after the seventh round of the 28th Junior National Chess Championship here today.

RKarthik caused an upset by defeating Tejas Bakre of Indian Airlines, while the match between A Sasikiran and S Kidambi, both leaders, ended in a draw in just 24 moves. Both led the table alongwith Karthik with six points each.Results (7th round): S Kidambi (6) drew K. Sasikaran (6); R. Karathik (6) bt Tejas Bakre (5); Rishipal Singh (5.5) drew T.V Karthekeyan (5.5); Neeloptpal Dass (5.5) bt Rahul Shandlya (4.5); P Harikrishna (5.5) bt S Kutwal (4.5); Beenish Bhatia (5.5) bt D Ravishankar (4.5); Pramod N (5.50 bt Daleep Tripathi (4.5); Abhey Karnataki (5) bt Surinder Sinha (4); S. Vikramjit (5) bt Arvinderpreet Singh (4); Deepanjan Dass (5) bt Yashpal Sonwani (4); Vikas Sharma (4.5) drew Navin Jain (4.5)

Three share lead

Chennai: Top seed GM Pravin Thipsay, Ravi Hegde (UBI) and GB Prakash (IB) jointly lead the pack with 4.5 points at the end of fifth round of the All-India inter-bank chess tournament, conducted by Bank of Maharashtra at Hotel President on Thursday.