The 44th Chess Olympiad will be formally opened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday during a ceremony held at Chennai’s JLN Indoor Stadium.
Anurag Thakur, Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports, will also attend the occasion. The first-ever Chess Olympiad Torch Relay was also inaugurated by Prime Minister on June 19 at Indira Gandhi National Stadium in New Delhi.
Over the course of 40 days, torch visited 75 significant landmarks across the nation, covering over 20,000 kilometres. It culminated in Mahabalipuram before continuing on to FIDE Headquarters in Switzerland.
Earlier on Monday, inaugural Chess Olympiad Torch Relay arrived in Madurai, Tamil Nadu.
Grandmaster J Deepan Chakkravarthy received and carried the torch, which was then given to medal winners in various sports at the race course grounds.
The other cities that have been covered by torch relay so far include Agartala, Namsai, Dibrugarh, Itanagar, Leh, Jammu, Srinagar, Dharamshala, Shimla, Chandigarh, Patiala, Amritsar, Panipat, Gurugram, Kurukshetra, Dehradun, Haridwar, Meerut, Kanpur, Kevadia, Ahmedabad, Dandi, Surat, Jaipur, Daman, Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Panaji, Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior, Jhansi, Gangtok, Siliguri, Kohima, Gangtok, Shillong, Guwahati and Siliguri, Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Puri, Konark, Visakhapatnam, Amaravati, Bengaluru, Mangaluru and Thiruvananthapuram.