Chess prodigy may get extended visa

LONDON — When the news spread last week that Britain would send back to India its best “chess prospect in a generation,” more than a few people were astonished. But on Friday, British authorities appeared to change their minds, saying they may allow the 9-year-old chess prodigy, Shreyas Roya, and his family to stay in the country after all.

“Shreyas’s jumping and dancing,” the boy’s father, Jitendra Singh, said in an email. “Tears came out from my wife’s eyes.”

The family’s future in Britain had seemed bleak. The five-year visa that Singh, an information technology projects manager, had been granted to work for Tata Consultancy Services in Britain could not be extended once it expired in September.

Britain’s Home Office said there could be no exception. “There is no route within the immigration rules which would allow the family to remain in the U.K.,” a spokesman for the Home Office said Thursday.

But on Friday, Singh said, “We got good news.” Singh said the Home Office had informed him he would be allowed to apply for a new visa based on his son’s exceptional talent.

It was not clear why the Home Office, which did not respond to requests for comment Friday, changed course. But according to the Times of London, the government decided to waive its requirement that a new application had to occur from outside the country, and said the application would be sponsored by Tata.

Immigration law in Britain allows for visas to be granted to those with “exceptional talent” or in certain areas of “sport.”

Family of Shreyas Royal / New York Times Shreyas Royal plays the ceremonial first move at a chess tournament in London in 2017.