PANJIM: Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar felicitated Ivana Maria Furtado for winning the gold at the Asian Junior Chess Championship in Iran here on Friday and promised to provide full support for the chess prodigy.
Ivana, who was part of the India team at the prestigious championship and won the gold for the second time at the Asia level, was promised full assistance from the Government.
“You have been consistently achieving top honours in official chess championships at international levels for almost a decade now. We will do our best so that you continue to pursue your goal. The Government will do everything necessary in your quest to achieving still higher laurels as you have made India and especially Goa and Goans very proud with your scintillating performance in Iran and that too for the second time,” stated Parrikar.
“I will follow up the matter of providing further assistance,” he added.
Earlier, Ivana, who is rightly labelled as Goa’s genius in chess having won the world-under-8 gold some years ago, was accorded a warm and affectionate reception at the Dabolim airport. She was received by Carlos Almeida, MLA, the director of Airports Authority of India, secretary of Goa Chess Association Kishor Bandekar, members of Goa Cricket Association, Sandeep Heble, relatives and scorers of admires and friends of Ivana. Her manager, Jennifer Lopes Furtado was also felicitated.
Surprisingly, there was no official representative of SAG to welcome the gold medalist. Meanwhile, Sidarth Kukoliencar, ex-MLA congratulated Ivana and said that he could not personally felicitate her as he is in Tirupati. “I conveyed my greetings to Eli Furtado, the father of Ivana,” he said.
