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Sensex shoots up 130.44 points

This was highest rise in 1998 so far, marketmen said. The foreign institutional investors made moderate purchases but their buying was not aggressive, BSE brokers said, and added that encouraged by the strong recovery in the Asian markets, speculators made heavy purchases in heavy-weighted scrips resulting into a smart rally on the BSE.

Apart from speculators, Unit Trust of India also made marginal purchases, they said.

The Hang Seng index gained by 1326.24 points or 14.33 per cent to 10578.60 points today on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Similarly other Asian markets also started showing good recovery, brokers said.

Reflecting the trend, the BSE Sensex opened at 3288.78 points, touched the day's low of 3288.78, breaking the psychological barrier of 3300 mark it touched the day's high of 3364.37 points, finally ended at 3354.80 points, netting a gain of 130.44 points as against the previous close of 3224.36 points.

Commenting on the trading, a dealer at the leading international investor group said that ''the operators driven the market and there is no major buying support from the FIIs, so far.''

Meanwhile, the fundamentally strong scrips like ITC, Reliance, TISCO, and Tata Tea registered an impressive gain on the good buying support.

The broadbased BSE-100 index gained by 53.45 points to 1454.83 points over the previous close of 1401.38 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices closed higher by 10.68 and 5.10 points to 324.31 and 139.27 points as against the previous close of 313.63 and 134.17 points respectively.

The total turnover on the BSE reported during the day was Rs 7.6 billion.

ITC topped the list by registering highest turnover of Rs 1.9 billion, followed by Tata Tea Rs 1.3 Billion, State Bank Rs 873.3 million, Castrol Rs 761.2 million and Reliance Rs 544.8 million.

Hectic activity was observed at the other counters like MTNL Rs 264.9 million, TELCO Rs 263.2 million, Hind Lever Rs 216.6 million, L and T Rs 121 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 115.1 million, BHEL Rs 106.9 million, TISCO Rs 93.4 million, ACC Rs 88.1 million, Glaxo India Rs 59.9 million and Hind Petro Rs 55 million.

Good transactions were reported at some counters in B1 group like Corporation, LML, NIIT, Pentafour, Elgi Equip, Hind Oil Exp, Cipla, Reliance Pet, Hoech Mar Ro, Aptech, HDFC Bank, Bank of Baroda, Indus Ind Bank, Ingersoll and Triveni Engn.

UNI