Mumbai May 16: The Sensex opened with positive gap 123 points at 17,476, and soon slipped into a negative zone and touch a low of 17,315.

Fresh buying in banking stocks helped the index rebound into the positive zone.

The index touched a high of 17,497 - up 182 points from day's low. The Sensex finally ended with a gain of 81 points at 17,435.

The market breadth was marginally positive - out of 2,768 stocks traded, 1,547 advanced, 1,137 declined and 84 were unchanged today.

The NSE Nifty moved up 42 points to close at 5,158.

Ranbaxy surged 3.3% to Rs 511. Reliance Communications and Hindustan Unilever gained 2.1% to Rs 602 and Rs 244, respectively.

HDFC Bank and Jaiprakash Associates advanced 1.7% each to Rs 1,502 and Rs 270, respectively.

SBI and ICICI Bank moved up around 1.4% each at Rs 1,704 and Rs 941, respectively.

Larsen & Toubro, Tata Motors and Tata Steel added over 1% each to Rs 2,996, Rs 670 and Rs 891, respectively.

Satyam, DLF and Reliance Infrastructure were the other major gainers today.

Ambuja Cements, Infosys, HDFC and TCS declined 1% each at Rs 111, Rs 1,871, Rs 2767 and Rs 976, respectively.

Bharti Airtel, Cipla and Wipro dropped over 0.5% each to Rs 851, Rs 212 and Rs 506, respectively.

Aishwarya Telecom led the value chart with a turnover of Rs 358.32 crore followed by HDFC (Rs 177.77 crore), Reliance (Rs 171.89 crore), SAIL (Rs 171.20 crore) and Reliance Communications (Rs 170 crore).

Aishwarya Telecom, also, topped the volume chart with trades of around 2.93 crore shares followed by ICFI (1.43 crore), Ispat (1.16 crore), Chambal Fertilisers (1.15 crore), Nagarjuna Fertilisers (96 lakh).