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Sensex plunges, rescued by UTI to show gain of 24.77 points

The weak spell of the last two days after the Union budget in which the marketmen had 'high expectations', continued till noon and the Sensex crashed below the 3500 mark to touch a record low of 3483.81 points due to the speculative selling pressure by foreign financial institutions and bull liquidation.

However, from mid-session, Unit Trust of India and other domestic institutions started heavy buying of scrips like Larsen and Toubro, Reliance, Tisco, BHEL, Mahindra and Mahindra, and State Bank of India which helped the equities to recover lost ground.

Reflecting the trend, the BSE Sensex opened at 3572.96, touched the record low of 3483.81, hit the day's high of 3600.35, and finally closed at 3597.98 points, gaining a net increase of 24.77 points compared to the previous close of 3573.21.

The BSE-100 index also edged up by 3.90 points to 1598.38 points. The BSE-200 index and dollex index were eased by 0.12 and 0.05 points to 365.10 and 145.42 points.

The total turnover involving 69.1 million shares of 1,408 companies in 159,949 trades was Rs 16.27 billion.

ITC recorded the highest business turnover of Rs 2.87 billion, followed by Satyam Comp Rs 2.3 billion, Reliance Rs 1.3 billion, SBI Rs 1.1 billion, BPL Rs 1 million, Tisco Rs 633.5 million, Videocon Int Rs 630.1 million, Pentafour S Rs 617.2 million, Zee Tele Rs 413 million, L and T Rs 400.4 million, ACC Rs 330.3 million, Sterlite Rs 319.9 million, Telco Rs 309.5 million, Rs Tata Tea 298 million, and HDFC Rs 225.3 million.

The actively traded scrips in 'b1' group were, BFS Softwr Rs 90.1 million, Silverline Rs 85.2 million, Wipro Rs 40.3 million, DSQ Software Rs 30.1 million, Rolta Ind Rs 29.1 million, Hoech Mar Ro Rs 25 million, Software Sol Rs 20.2 million, Cipla Rs 15.3 million, Him Fut Comm Rs 11.6 million, Marico Indus Rs 10.5 million, RS Software and Tata Infotech Rs 10.4 million each, India Cement Rs 9.7 million, and Reliance Pet Rs 8.6 million.

UNI