After winning the World Rapid Chess Championship, Anand was greeted with a thread of plaudits on Twitter, including wishes from President Ram Nath Kovind among others.
Viswanathan Anand described the win against Norway's world champion Magnus Carlsen as the crucial moment in the tournament.
Playing with black pieces, the former world champion played the contest on an aggressive note which caught the world number one Carlsen off guard.
The Indian Grandmaster will miss the World Championship as the organising committee earlier picked Russian GM Vladimir Kramnik over him as the wild card to Candidates meet.
After the sixth round, both Anand and Swapnil were at the joint third place along with 16 others with 4.5 points at the end of round six.
International Master Praggnanandhaa, who is just 12 years old, took 64 moves to force 26-year-old Howell to surrender, taking take his overall points to 3.5.
Anand will face Latvian grandmaster Shirov Alexei, while Harika will take on French Grandmaster Laurent Fressinet in the fourth round.
Anand notched up an emphatic win over American Marc Esserman, while Harika beat Englishman Oyama Akito in the first round late last night.
This might well be the end of Anand's aspirations for a World Championship match in 2018 unless he gets a wildcard into the next year's candidates' tournament.
The World Cup is a knock out event with two games under normal time control followed by Rapid or blitz games to determine the winner.
Anand was superior in all departments of the game. The Alapin opening by the Malaysian did not bother the Indian ace much as he gained easy equality early in the opening.
The 47-year-old Indian ace has won the World Cup twice in China (2000) and Hyderabad (2002) respectively.
The Indian ace needed a big breakthrough in the blitz tournament spanning over 18-rounds but he was not in his best shape to make a mark.
The Indian ace was languishing at the bottom of the tables on one point from three games thanks to a solitary draw and today he took his tally to five points out of a possible six as a win here is worth two and a draw gives one point.
The Indian ace was pegged back by an opening round loss against Hikaru Nakamura of United States and then suffered another debacle against Levon Aronian of Armenia in the third round.
Anand played his last white game in the tournament against Vachier-Lagrave and had a small advantage but the Frenchman was quite up to the task in defence and steered the game to a draw.
With his fourth draw in five games combined with a brilliant victory over Fabiano Caruana of United States in the previous round, Anand garnered 3.5 points out of a possible six.
For Anand, the fourth draw serves him good as the Indian ace has not really been in great form in super events off late.
With three draws from as many games, Anand would need to post some victories if he intends to finish on the podium.
Anand holds an excellent record against Svidler but the Russian was simply too cautious having lost the first round of the tournament.
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