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Shares recover towards fag-end; Sensex gains 25 points, 3207.71

After a dull start, pivotals staged a smart recovery towards the fag end of trading, pulling up the Sensex above the 3200-mark following good buying support from local operators in the index-based scrips at the Bombay Stock Exchange today.

The pharma counters reported marginal gains while infotech stocks flared up on increased buying support from speculators, dealers said. Most of the counters reported sharp decline during intra-day trading and but gained considerably in the last half-an -hour, dealers said.

Reflecting the mixed trend, the 30-scrip BSE Sensex opened at 3182.75 points, touched the day's high of 3208.71 points, fell to the day's low of 3157.70 points, before closing at 3207.71 points, showing a net gain of 24.07 points as against the previous close of 3183.64 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index rose by 10.65 points to 1409.61 points as against the previous close of 1398.96 points.

''It could not be confirmed whether the foreign institutional investors were active in the market," the chief dealer at a institutional brokerage said and added that the UTI has reportedly pressed sales in some of the prominent counters.

According to sources, the market witnessed hectic selling spree during intra-day trading following report of Indian National Lok Dal's decision of withdrawing support to the Bharatiya Janata party-led coalition government at the Centre.

The market saw smart recovery in the last half-hour on speculative purchases, in spite of this negative factor.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices also improved by 2.61 and 1.12 points to 327.32 and 128.41 points as against the previous close of 324.71 and 127.29 points respectively.

Total turnover on the BOLT system reported during the day was Rs 13.98 billion.

Pentafour Software stood first in the list of turnover by registering highest turnover of Rs 2.58 billion, followed by Satyam Computers Rs 1.68 billion, ITC Rs 1.47 billion.

Other actively traded counters were Tata Tea (Rs 828.8 million), Castrol (Rs 604.7 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 540 million), Reliance (Rs 381.9 million), MTNL (Rs 337.7 million), Telco (Rs 319.2 million), SBI (Rs 295 million), Tisco (Rs 282.4 million), NIIT (Rs 231.7 million), Hindustan Lever (Rs 146.8 million), L&T (Rs 139 million) and ACC (Rs 138.2 million).

UNI

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