The Sensex opened with a steady gain of six points over its last close at 6,556. Though early profit-booking dragged the index to a low of 6,552, it soon recovered to surge past the 6,600-mark in early noon trades.
While the market was extremely buoyant in the afternoon trades, the Sensex came off-highs in mid-noon trades amid steady slide in select counters.
The Sensex, however, firmed up in late noon trades to touch an intra-day high of 6,617, before losing some sheen towards the fag-end to close 56 points higher at 6,606. The Nifty, too, rallied sharply and advanced 17 points to 2,069.
Grasim added 1.59% (Rs 19) to Rs 1,230. Gujarat Ambuja and ACC were up a per cent each at Rs 413 (up Rs 4) and Rs 364 (up Rs 2), respectively.
Reliance flared up 2.73% (Rs 15) to Rs 571. ITC jumped 1.70% (Rs 23) to Rs 1,373, and HLL rose 2.59% (Rs 3) to Rs 133. ONGC, on late buying support, was up Rs 4 at Rs 916.
Zee vaulted 5.69% (Rs 8) to Rs 148 on strong buying support.
Wipro (up Rs 9 to Rs 669), Infosys (up Rs 12 to Rs 2,232) and Satyam (up Rs 4 to Rs 421) ended with steady gains.
HDFC Bank gained 1.94% (Rs 10) to Rs 553. While SBI was up a per cent (Rs 6) at Rs 652, ICICI Bank, however, ended marginally lower at Rs 424.
BHEL at Rs 812 (up Rs 11 or 1.35%), HPCL at Rs 322 (up Rs 6 or 1.75%), Tisco at Rs 390 (up Rs 8 or 2%) and Tata Power at Rs 352 (up Rs 6 or 1.66%) advanced on decent buying support.
Tata Motors moved up 1.49% (Rs 6) to Rs 412, while Maruti clocked 1.37% gains (Rs 5) to Rs 408. Bajaj, however, dropped 1.67% (Rs 18) to Rs 1,066, and Hero Honda slipped a per cent (Rs 5) to Rs 535.
Bharti tumbled 2.32% (Rs 5) to Rs 212, while HDFC lost 1.45% (Rs 10) to Rs 713.