Murali Karthikeyan, Rathnakaran make GM norms
International Master K Rathnakaran also joined the party by making his second Grandmaster norm defeating top seed Abhijeet Gupta.
At the top of the tables Grandmaster Aleksej Aleksandrov of Belarus pulled himself closer to winning the tournament at the expense of Marat Dzhumaev of Uzbekistan.
With just one round to go, Aleksandrov is sitting pretty in the tournament on 7.5 points from nine games enjoying a half point lead over nearest contender Henrik Teske of Germany.
Five players