Top-seeded Gagare exploited the back rank weakness of Sankarsha Shelke effectively, wrapping the point in 27 moves.
Sharing the lead with the Maharashtra duo at 2 points apiece were International Masters Stany G.A., Himanshu Sharma, Vikramaditya Kulkarni, Nitin S and Akshat Khamparia.
In the day's upsets, International Masters, S Ravi Teja and Dinesh Sharma shed half points to Manush Shah and Ojas Kulkarni respectively.
Other seeded players Sadhwani Raunak, Sankalp Gupta, D Gukesh, Aditya Mittal and Luke Mendonca scored equally easy victories.
Important and Indian results, Round 3 (Indians unless
specified): Hikaru Nakamura (Usa, 2.5) drew with Grigoriy Oparin (Rus, 2.5); Aryan Tari (Nor, 2) lost to Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra, 3); Dmitry Jakovenko (Rus, 3) beat Alexandra Kosteniuk (Rus, 3); M R Lalith Babu (2.5) drew with Radoslav Wojtaszek (Pol, 2.5); Richard Rapport (Hun, 3) beat Al-Sayed Mohammed (Qat, 2); V Vishnu Prasanna (2) lost to Markus Ragger (Aut, 3); Nigel Short (Eng, 2) lost to D Harika (3); S Kidambi (2.5) drew with Bruzon Batista Lazaro (Cub, 2.5); S P Sethuraman (3) beat Bai Jinshi (Chn, 2); Bela Khotenashvili (Geo, 2.5) drew with Abhijeet Gupta (2.5); Aravindh Chithambaram (3) beat Sandipan Chanda (2); Anurag Mhamal (2.5) drew with Igarza Renier Vazquez (Esp, 2.5); V Anand (2.5) beat Xu Xiangyu (Chn, 1.5); Fabien Libiszewski (Fra, 1.5) lost to P Harikrishna (2.5); Surya Shekhar Ganguly (2.5) beat Dmitrij Kollars (Ger, 1.5); Vidit Santosh Gujrathi (2) drew with Almagro Llamas Pablo (Esp, 2); Padmini Rout (2) drew with Axel Bachmann (Par, 2); Pavel Tregubov (Rus, 2.5) beat S Satyapragyan (1.5); G N Gopal (2.5) beat David Martin Martinez (Esp, 1.5); Prasanna Rao (2) beat Rolf Bergstrom (Swe, 1); Pratyusha Bodda (1.5) drew with Miklos Galyas (Hun, 1.5); Pontus Carlsson (Swe, 1.5) drew with Nisha Mohota (1.5); Siva Mahadevan (2) beat Gerben Veltkamp (Ned, 1).