CHENNAI: FIDE, the world governing body for chess, put together an extraordinary appeal late on Friday night as they urged the Canadian government to issue visas to players who have qualified for the Candidates. The elite eight player competition identities the challenger for the World Championship match later year. Both Candidates events (open and women) are scheduled to be in Toronto from April 3 to 22
On X (formerly Twitter), they wrote: “Regrettably, players from various countries worldwide, who submitted their visa applications [a] few months ago, have not yet received any updates on their status,” the body said.
“With only a month remaining till the FIDE Candidates Tournament, there are grave concerns about the timely arrival of the players to Toronto.” They tagged the official account of the Minister of Immigration, Marc Miller, in the appeal. Emil Sutovsky, FIDE CEO, while sharing the appeal on X, tagged the account of Justin Trudeau, the Canadian PM.
In a separate email to this daily, FIDE confirmed that four out of the five Indian players are yet to hear any updates about their visa status.
“We can confirm that four out of five Indian players did not receive a reply from Immigration Canada, despite timely submitting their application,” said the body.
It’s understood that the brother-sister duo of R Vaishali and R Pragnnanandhaa are among the four. “Pragg, Vaishali and coach have submitted biometrics,” their trainer RB Ramesh told this daily. “They are supposed to send us the date to submit passport and it will take 10 working days after that to get visa. Time is very short," RB Ramesh said. As it stands, they plan to leave to Toronto on March 29.
Vidit Gujrathi, D Gukesh, and Koneru Humpy are the other Indians to have qualified.
Canada and India had a much documented diplomatic row last year after Trudeau publicly said that the latter was involved in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen who batted for a separate Sikh state (New Delhi has continued to deny the allegations). Since the accusation, both countries have cut down diplomatic links. For a brief while, India had suspended visa services but it’s running now.
While one cannot say with certainty if this current stand-off between the two countries is a reason for the delay, players from other countries too have been affected.
In all, about 40 people are still waiting for their visas to attend the tournament.
“If we don’t have some significant progress in one week, it’s cancelled,” was how Vladimir Drkulec, president of the Chess Federation of Canada, summed up the situation to the Toronto Star, a Canadian daily. “You can’t have a Candidates tournament without the Candidates.”
Players from three other countries have also been impacted. “Players from four countries are impacted (not only India or Russia),” Sutovsky posted on X after FIDE’s appeal.
“We hope to get a reply from Canadian authorities within a week, not willing to move the event we were diligently preparing together with an outstanding LOC, but we do have plan B.”
