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Sensex up 50 points

Pivotals firmed up further on the Bombay Stock Exchange following good buying support from foreign funds and bull operators at the third straight day, sending up the Sensex up by about 50 points to 3245.88 today.

The newspaper report regarding law ministry's green signal for the buyback proposal boosted market sentiments initially, but operators remain cautious in view of detail information and restrictions in the proposed scheme, leading BSE brokers said, adding that the undertone was firm.

Foreign institutional investors made purchases in select scrips like Bajaj Auto, MTNL and some other blue chip counters while the domestic institutional bought small number of shares at the prime counters, dealers said.

Reflecting the bullish phase, the BSE sensitive index opened at 3225.71 points, touched the day's high of 3268.54, fell to touch the day's low of 3221.92 points before closing at 3245.88 points, showing a net gain of 49.94 points over the previous close of 3195.94 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index drifted lower by 21.04 points to 1428.45 against the previous close of 1407.41 points. The BSE-200 and dollex indices also closed higher by 4.42 and 1.29 points to 325.56 and 127.21 points against the previous close of 321.14 and 125.92 points respectively.

Among the gainers, automobile giant Bajaj Auto gained Rs 45 to Rs 609.50 from Rs 564.50, Hind Lever earned Rs 35 to reach Rs 1557.75, ITC gained Rs 19.75 to Rs 673, TISCO rose by Rs 1.50 to Rs 124.30.

L and T lost Rs 5 to reach Rs 221, State Bank drifted lower by Rs 3.20 to Rs 213.50, TELCO eased by Rs 1 to Rs 160 over the previous close.

Total turnover on the screen based trading system was Rs 8.44 billion. ITC topped the list in turnover, registering the highest turnover of Rs 2.08 billion, followed by Satyam Computers (Rs 1.19 billion), State Bank of India (Rs 559.5 million).

Other actively traded counters were Reliance (Rs 433.7 million), Tata Tea (Rs 421 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 340.5 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 328.1 million), Castrol Ind (Rs 233.7 million), Telco (Rs 222.9 million), Hind Lever (Rs 207.3 million), Bajaj Auto (Rs 183.8 million), Pentafour (Rs 161.9 million), NIIT (Rs 153.3 million), BHEL (Rs 138.0 million) and Sterlite (Rs 128 million).

UNI