Incidentally, the AVM imposed on this stock is the highest among the "A" group stocks as BSE has imposed the AVM of 10 per cent on other stocks like Syngenta India and Tata Power. BSE has imposed AVM in only those stocks in which it has witnessed huge volatility during the preceeding week.

The KIL counter has begun to record very huge volumes since the last fortnight and the net outstanding position in this counter has also jumped up significantly. The average badla rate in this counter has firmed up from Rs 0.13 on February 10 to Rs 0.15 on Saturday last and the net outstanding position has almost doubled from 12.19 lakh shares to 21.30 lakh shares taking the outstanding carried forward value from Rs 6.42 crore to Rs 12.06 crore.

KIL breached its 52-week high of Rs 66 on February 15 intra-day on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) after it crossed the 8 per cent upper circuit filter and closed at Rs 61.05. At the National Stock Exchange (NSE), the stock closed at Rs 61.20 on the same day, displaying a rise of 8 per cent. The stock witnessed hefty volumes with 23,26,647 shares changing hands on the BSE and a volume of 16,31,234 shares on the NSE. The stock has begun to move to this level from the 52-week low at both the exchanges at Rs 15 very recently.

The spurt took place owing to market talks that its cement division was the next target for a takeover by cement multinational giants such as Lafarge and Blue Circle.

Despite the company patriarch BK Birla's denial that there was no takeover threat, the rumours were too strong to heed any such denial. However, reported comment of company secretary and vice-president SK Parik that friends of BK Birla had already begun to acquire shares from ICICI, which had 2.96 per cent stake in KIL, had not stemmed the mad rush to buy KIL shares.

The move to acquire the ICICI's stake was to thwart any takeover attempt. This possibility had been created over the past fortnight by orchestrated purchasing at the counter in cross-country operations.

The Birlas, who hold nearly 26 per cent in KIL, have already scaled up their holding by a shade over 4 per cent in the current fiscal through open market operation to wipe out the reduction in their shareholding in 1999-2000 due to conversion of GDRs into equity.