Bhakti Kulkarni (Air India) and Vantika Agrawal (Delhi) played out a draw to remain joint leaders, with 4.5 points, after the fifth round of the 46th National women’s chess championship here on Monday.

Playing with white in a King’s Indian defence game, Bhakti enjoyed a slight edge in the middle game but failed to convert the advantage and agreed to split the point after 59 moves.

Top seed Soumya Swaminathan (PSPB) and Maharashtra’s Mrudul Dehankar were locked in a similar position.

The former found it hard to crack the latter’s defence and signed the peace treaty after 42 moves by three-fold repetition of position arrived out of Trompowsky Attack.

Important results (fifth round, TN unless specified): Bhakti Kulkarni (AI) 4.5 drew with Vantika Agrawal (Del) 4.5.

Mrudul Dehankar (Mah) 4 drew with Soumya Swaminathan (PSPB) 4.

Aarthie Ramaswamy (AI) 4 drew with S. Vijayalakshmi (AI) 4; V. Varshini 3 lost to Divya Deshmukh (Mah) 4; Kiran Manisha Mohanty (LIC) 3 lost to Srija Seshadri 4; P. Bala Kannamma 3.5 drew with Priyanka Nutakki (AP) 3.5.

Pratyusha Bodda (AP) 4 bt Potluri Saye Srreezza (TS) 3; Y. Saranya 3 lost to P.V. Nandhidhaa 4; Michelle Catherina 4 bt C.H. Meghna (Railways) 3.

Meenal Gupta (J&K) 3.5 drew with Nisha Mohota (PSPB) 3.5; Sunyasakta Satpathy (Odi) 3 lost to Swati Ghate (LIC) 4; Isha Sharma (Kar) 4 bt Nandhini Saripalli (Goa) 3.

Meenakshi Subbaraman (AI) 4 bt Srishti Pandey (Mah) 3; Nityata Jain (MP) 4 bt V. Rindhiya 3.

C.M.N. Sunyuktha 3 lost to Bagyashree Thipsay (Mah) 4.