Tejas Bakre was officially conferred the Grandmaster title by FIDE, the World Chess Federation, in a Presidential Board meeting held at Tripoli in Libya during the World Chess Championship last week.

Informing the confirmation of titles, FIDE vice-president and All India Chess Federation secretary P T Ummer Koya said, "Tejas now becomes the 11th Grandmaster of the country. I think we are very much on target for 100 Grandmasters by 2012, the main aim of the AICF."

Apart from Tejas, there were as many as three big gainers amongst women players.

Swati Ghate, S Meenakshi and Dronavalli Harika were awarded the Women Grandmaster's title and they now join S Vijayalakshmi, Aarthie Ramaswamy and Nisha Mohota.

Koneru Humpy is the other player who had been conferred the same title but since then the Andhra girl has grown quite well and is now amongst the 11 Grandmasters in the country.

The 23-year-old Tejas was conferred the title on the basis of his performance in the second Parsvnath International Open Chess Tournament in March this year where he completed the formalities of attaining the required rating achievement for the GM title, 2500, but such a rating need not be published. 

Tejas adds to the list of Viswanathan Anand, Dibyendu Barua, Pravin Thipsay, Abhijit Kunte, Krishnan Sasikiran, P Harikrishna, Surya Shekhar Ganguly, Sandipan Chanda, Koneru Humpy and R B Ramesh.

"I am very delighted and pleased with this achievement, I can play freely now and concentrate on improving my Elo rating," said Tejas, who is in Delhi en route to participation in two events in the Czech Republic.

M R Venkatesh, R R Laxman, Vishal Sareen and Saptarshi Roy Chowdhury were awarded the International Master's title in the same meeting where Sameer Mallick of West Bengal was conferred the title of International Arbiter.