V Sivaranjani, Rehan Poncha, C Subha, J P Arjun and B M Madhu Kumar were the star performers on day three in the National Junior aquatic championships, as Karnataka maintained its sterling performance, winning 12 of the 16 gold medals decided on Thursday.

Poncha, Subha and Madhu Kumar also set new meet records as Karnataka's gold medal tally swelled to 35, way ahead of second-placed Maharashtra, who have seven gold medals.

After helping her team to win the 400 metres medley relay in the under-17 category in the morning session, Sivaranjani returned in the evening to win the 400 metres freestyle, her fourth individual gold. She also won two gold medals in relay to take her total collection to six.

The session got off to another electric start with Rehan Poncha erasing one more record which stood in the name of J Abhijith. He won the 400 metres freestyle gold in a time of 4 minutes, 13.60 seconds to improve upon the old mark of 4:14.41, set in 1995. This was his third individual gold and all three have come in record time. His total gold count stands at five after he won two more golds in the relays.

Subha earned her third individual gold today, winning the 100 metres butterfly in the under-14 section with a record time of 1:08.54 seconds. She bettered Shikha Tandon's record of 1:08.69 set in 2000. Subha has also won five gold medals.

The day's other record breaker, Madhukumar broke the meet record in the 50 metres breaststroke twice today. After clocking 31.63 in the heats, the Karnataka boy improved it further to 31.16 to the win the gold in the final, clipping the previous record of Gairik Bardhan of Bengal.

Bardhan clocked 32.05, an improvement upon his previous best time of 32.76 seconds, set last year in Chennai.

In waterpolo, Bengal blanked Madhya Pradesh 14-0 to progress to the semi-finals in the boys' section. In the semis tomorrow, they will take on Kerala, who thrashed Delhi 13-0 today.

The second semi-final will be contested between Punjab and Maharashtra.

In today's action, Punjab just managed to beat Karnataka 6-5 while Maharashtra thrashed Manipur 16-1.

The girls' semis will see another clash between Kerala and Bengal. Maharashtra will take on Karnataka in the other match.

In today's matches, Kerala beat Manipur 21-3 while Bengal defeated Delhi 6-1.

It was another lean day for the hosts who are yet to win their first gold medal. The best performance came from Meenakshi Tokas,who picked up the silver in under-17 girls' 400 metres feestyle, and Rohit Gupta, who came second in the same event in the boys' under-14.

Karntaka's Rohith Hawaldar won the gold which took his individual gold collection to three.

After the swimming powerhouse picked up the first seven gold medals decided today, it was Justine Mellocastro of Maharashtra who broke the trend winning the 400 metres freestyle in the under-14 girls' section.

 Inspired by Justine's performance, Arjun Muralidharan (100m butterfly boys' u-17) and Pooja Ghorpade (100m butterfly girls' u-17) won two more gold medals for Mahararashtra before Karnataka got back through V Bharath Kumar, who beat Maharashtra's Aditya Sangwekar to win the 100m buttefly boys' event in the under-14 section.