India is the future of Chess (leads the world in junior rankings now) and majority of Indian grandmasters are from Tamil Nadu. For decades the state led the country in this sport by a long margin and has treated this sport better than any other.
The Olympiad was originally to take place in Belarus until the country got mired in unrest. Then moved to Russia but got postponed to 2022 due to Covid. Then when Ukraine invasion happened Russia was a no-go.
FIDE was seriously in the lookout for a major chess playing country without wars, civil wars, pandemics etc.
That time an AICF secretary messaged FIDE and got India on the radar. He had 3 states in mind and it was TN that grabbed the opportunity in 5 min.
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