But the big news of the day was the shocking loss of former national champion, International Master Ponnuswamy Konguvel of BPCL to IM Shekar Sahu of Union Bank in just 21 moves.

Jha, Sahu, IM Sudhakar Babu of Indian Bank, Atanu Lahiri of LIC and Hari Om Sharma share the lead with six points.

Deshmukh, V Saravanan of IOC, Bangalore youngster N Sanjay, GM Dibyendu Barua of Tata Steel and another youngster, Ketan Boricha from Mumbai share the second spot with 5.5 points.

Jha had the slight advantage on the top board against Deshmukh after playing the Slav defence. In the time trouble, the latter piled on more misery and destroyed his position to surrender.

On the second board, Sahu faced Konguvel's Petroff defence but the positions were equal. On theeighth move, Konguvel made a weak move pushing his King to f1 and when Sahu offered a knight sacrifice, the former resigned when mate was inevitable.

RESULTS

Round 9:

Anup Deshmukh (2430) 5.5 lost to Sriram Jha (2330) 6; IM Shekar Chandra Sahu (2290) 6 bt IM Ponnuswamy Konguvel (2410) 5; V Saravanan (2390) 5.5 drew with N Sanjay (2285) 5.5; N Neelakanthan (2260) 5 lost to IM Sudhakar Babu (2335) 6; Atanu Lahiri (2310) 6 bt SJ Kamath (2240) 5; Dinesh Kumar Sharma (2375) 4.5 lost to Hari Om Sharma (2235) 6; GM Dibyendu Barua (2540) 5.5 bt Prathamesh Mokal (2175) 4.5; Ketan Boricha (2225) 5.5 bt Pankaj Joshi (2100) 4.5; Swayan Baran de 5 drew with Amardeep Bartakke (2220) 5; Sashikant Kutwal (2140) 4.5 drew with Rahul Shetty (2385) 4.5; Sujit Kumar Sinha (2270) 4.5 drew with IM Neeraj Kumar Mishra (2350) 4.5; IWM Nisha Mohota (2115) 4 lost to IM Verghese Koshy (2340) 5; Rashmin Pulekar (2105) 4 lost to K Visweshwaran (2240) 5; Vedant Goswami (2230) 5 bt Anand Venkatraman 4; D Ravi Shankar (2090) 4.5drew with Dilip Pagay (2230) 4.5.