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Sensex climbs again, up 56.21 points

Led by ITC, pivotals gained smartly on the Bombay Stock Exchange, continuing the uptrend on good buying support from foreign institutional investors and local funds at the last day of the weekly settlement today.

The market leader ITC quoted almost three per cent higher on news that excise claims against the firm will be lowered, market sources said. The tobacco giant closed at Rs 662.75, gaining Rs 25.50 over its previous close of 637.25.

Foreign funds made moderate to heavy purchases on heavy weighted counters like MTNL, BHEL, Mahindra and Mahindra and some others, while buying by company circles was reported in Reliance scrips.

Reflecting the firm trend, the 30-scrip Sensex opened higher at 2930.63 points, touched the day's high of 2985.49, dropped to touch the day's low of 2926.74 and finally ended at 2975.1, a net gain of 56.21 points against the previous close of 2918.89 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index gained by 20.90 points to reach 1323.25 points against the previous close of 1302.35 points. The BSE-200 and dollex indices closed higher by 3.92 and 1.59 points -- at 306.11 and 119.80 points against the previous close of 302.19 and 118.21 points respectively.

Total turnover on the BSE's BOLT network sharply increased to Rs 12.29 billion, up from yesterday's turnover of Rs 9.9 billion.

ITC clocked Rs 2.84 billion in business volume, followed by Satyam Computer (Rs 1.48 billion), Reliance (Rs 1.3 billion) and Zee Telefilms (Rs 940 million).

Other actively traded counters were State Bank of India (Rs 573.3 million), Pentafour Software (Rs 534.5 million), Castrol Ind (Rs 326.5 million), Tata Tea (Rs 210 million), MTNL (Rs 185.4 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 155.4 million), Bharat Petro (Rs 139.4 million), Telco (Rs 135.5 million), L and T (Rs 135.1 million), BHEL (Rs 114.5 million) and ACC (Rs 101.5 million).

Among the heavyweights, Satyam Comp closed higher by Rs 14.85 at Rs 475.50, State Bank was up by Rs 5 to Rs 188.30, Castrol increased by Rs 17.25 to Rs 591, Dr Reddy lost by Rs 3 to settle at Rs 407.25, Reliance was up by Rs 8 to Rs 114, BHEL's up by Rs 4 to Rs 243.20, MTNL by Rs 4.80 to Rs 206, L and T by Rs 3.50 to reach Rs 174.50 while Infosys Tech dropped Rs 27.25 to reach Rs 2435, BSES by Rs 1.80 to reach Rs 158.20.

UNI