The Sensex opened with a positive gap of 73 points at 14,237. After extending gains in early trades the index wiped-out its entire gains and touched a low of 14,164 in late morning trades.

However, fresh buying at lower levels saw the index bounce back to higher levels. The recovery was on rather lower volumes as anxious market players preffered to sit on the sidelines ahead of the weekend holidays owing to the current political crisis.

The index rallied to a high of 14,455, and finally settled with a gain of 261 points at 14,425. The NSE Nifty ended at 4,190, up 75 points.

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 on Friday.

INDEX MOVERS

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

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

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

ONGC [Get Quote] and NTPC gained 2.7% each at Rs 805 and Rs 164, respectively.

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

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

Cipla, Reliance, Bharti Airtel [Get Quote], Maruti [Get Quote] and Wipro [Get Quote] 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 [Get Quote] (1.13 crore), SEL Manufacturing (1.03 crore), IQMS Software [Get Quote] (99.90 lakh) and IFCI (99.30 lakh).