Which of the following statements about the 61st National Chess Championship…

Concept — A statement-verification question is settled statement by statement, never as a single lump. Each numbered claim is checked against the primary record of the event, and it counts as correct only when every component detail in it — the person, the venue, the amount, the placing and the mechanism — matches that record. One mismatched detail makes the whole statement incorrect, however accurate the rest of it is.

Application — The 61st National Chess Championship was played in August 2024 at RPS International School, Gurgaon, organised by the Haryana Chess Association — an 11-round Swiss event with 341 entrants and a total prize fund of ₹30 lakh.

• Statement 1: GM Karthik Venkataraman of Andhra Pradesh finished on 9 points and took the title, collecting the trophy and ₹6 lakh. The person, the venue and the prize amount all match the record, so this claim stands exactly as written.

• Statement 2: IM Neelash Saha also finished on 9 points, but the leaders were separated by Buchholz tiebreak scores — no playoff or tiebreak game was played at all. On those scores GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly took second with ₹5 lakh and Saha third with ₹4 lakh. Two component details therefore fail: the placing (third, not second) and the mechanism (a tiebreak score, not a game played against Ganguly).

Cross-check — All three leaders were level on 9 out of 11, so the order in the table comes purely from the numerical tiebreak scores — only 0.5 Buchholz separated the runner-up from the champion. The table therefore confirms the first statement and refutes the second, and the choice that matches is “Only 1”.