IT, oil shares help Sensex rise 51 pts; Nifty ends above 6K mark

Bharti Airtel rose 2 per cent in line with peers with non-index constituents Idea, Rcom and MTNL up 3.5-4.6 percent.

However, after clocking gains in recently, shares of HDFC Bank, L&T, HDFC and ICICI Bank saw profit booking.

Support from Asian stocks which rose to 17-month high and a firm opening in Europe, helped Indian indices cement gains.

The Sensex, which started the New Year on a strong note, is likely to extend the bull-run and touch all-time high of 21,700 by this year-end, a research report by HSBC said.

Globally, Asian stocks closed narrowly mixed. Indices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan closed higher while South Korea ended lower. China and Japan markets were closed.

However, European markets were trading lower in their afternoon deals on profit-booking after yesterday's rally. The CAC was down by 0.54 per cent, the DAX by 0.28 per cent and the FTSE by 0.13 per cent.

From the Sensex pack, 16 shares closed with losses while 14 scrips ended with gains. Dr Reddy's Lab was the top gainer with a rise of 2.35 per cent, followed by Bharti Airtel (1.99 pc), ONGC (1.95 pc), RIL (1.51 pc), Infosys (1.24 pc), TCS (1.24 pc), SBI (0.93 pc) and Wipro (0.93 pc).

However, Tata Power declined by 1.39 per cent, followed by Sun Pharma (1.09 pc), Maruti Suzuki (0.95 pc), Hero Motocorp (0.87 pc), HDFC Bank (0.72 pc) and ITC (0.70 pc).

Among sectoral indices, the BSE-Oil&Gas rose by 1.37 per

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