The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 73 points at 14,237. After extending gains in early trades, the index dropped a low of 14,164 in late morning trades.

Fresh buying at lower levels saw the index bounce, but the recovery was on low volumes as anxious players opted for a wait-and-watch outlook ahead of the weekend and the current political crisis.

The index rallied to a high of 14,455 in noon deals, and finally settled with a gain of 261 points at 14,425.

The BSE Metal index surged nearly 3% to 10,277. The Auto and the PSU indices rallied over 2% each to 4569 and 6626, respectively.

The market breadth was fairly positive - out of 2,677 stocks traded, 1,563 advanced, 1,067 declined and 47 were unchanged today.

INDEX MOVERS

Tata Motors zoomed nearly 6% to Rs 658. BHEL soared over 5% to Rs 1,750.

Reliance Energy, Tata Steel and ACC surged around 4% each to Rs 736, Rs 582 and Rs 1,010, respectively.

SBI, Ranbaxy and Satyam rallied around 3.5% each to Rs 1,466, Rs 361 and Rs 437, respectively

ONGC and NTPC gained 2.7% each at Rs 805 and Rs 164, respectively.

Mahindra & Mahindra and Reliance Communications advanced 2.5% each to Rs 640 and Rs 499, respectively.

Ambuja Cements, Hindalco and Larsen & Toubro added 2% each to Rs 135, Rs 142 and Rs 2,444, respectively.

Cipla, Reliance, Bharti Airtel, Maruti and Wipro were the other major gainers today.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

SEL Manufacturing topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 212.40 crore followed by SBI (Rs 133 crore), Reliance (Rs 99.40 crore), Asian Granito (Rs 97.40 crore) and Omaxe (Rs 91 crore).

Nagarjuna Fertilisers led the volume chart with trades of around 1.29 crore shares followed by Tata Teleservices (1.13 crore), SEL Manufacturing (1.03 crore), IQMS Software (99.90 lakh) and IFCI (99.30 lakh).