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Sensex surges 86.94 points

Dealers attributed the sudden jump in the BSE Sensex to the market euphoria in anticipation of a Bharatiya Janata Party victory in the coming election and increased buying support from FIIs as well as speculators.

Prominent scrips like HPCL BHEL, Raasi Cement, Ponds, and Glaxo were the major gainers of the day today. The Ponds scrip opened at Rs 1078, touched the day's high of Rs 1185 and later closed at Rs 1168.35 points, registering a gain of 7.74 per cent against the previous close of Rs 1050.75, said an analyst at a leading institutional investor.

Leading BSE brokers said that yesterday's mammoth campaign rally of BJP-Shiv Sena alliance, addressed by Atal Behari Vajpayee and Sena chief Bal Thackeray, was one of the major factors in driving share prices up on the country's premier bourse.

Reflecting the bullish phase, the BSE Sensitive index opened at 3535.24 points, touched the day's high of 3584.67 points, declined to the day's low of 3526.35 points and finally ended at 3571.63 points, showing a net gain of 86.94 points against the previous close of 3484.69 points on Tuesday.

The broad-based BSE-100 index gained by 40.26 points to 1544.11 points against the previous close of 1503.85 points. Similarly, the BSE-200 and Dollex indices closed higher by 9.46 and 4.01 points to 342.95 and 145.40 points as against the previous close of 333.49 and 141.39 points respectively.

Commenting on the day's trading, Ramesh Daryani, a dealer at Skindia Finance, said that it was an operator-driven rally which would not stay for a long time. He said that FIIs and local operators were the buyers while domestic mutual funds were the sellers at the higher level.

The total turnover during the day was Rs 9.8 billion.

Tobacco giant ITC stood first in the list of turnover by registering the highest business volume of Rs 2.3 billion, followed by Tata Tea Rs 1.4 billion, Castrol Ind Rs 679.4 million, Reliance Rs 536.5 million, and State Bank Rs 511.1 million.

Hectic activity was witnessed at the other counters like ACC Rs 384.6 million, BHEL Rs 326.3 million, MTNL Rs 254.5 million, TELCO Rs 240.1 million, Hind Petrol Rs 180.2 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 158.7 million, Ponds Rs 157 million, TISCO Rs 137.9 million, L and T Rs 136.5 million.

Good transactions were reported in B1 counters at Cable Corp, Sundram Fast, Marico Indus, Bann Amman, Rel Pet, Flex Indus, Nedungadi Ba, Aptech, BFL Software, Nat Alum Co, Elgi Equip, Suashish Dia, Sounderaft Raasi Cement and Software.

UNI