The markets today opened on a promising note for the special 'Muhurat Trading Session'. The benchmark Bombay Stock Exchange index, the Sensex, touched a fresh 17-month high of 17,493 (up 169 points) in opening deals.

However, tepid cues from the global markets saw the index pare gains in the one-hour trading session and in fact slip into red to a low of 17,264 - a loss of 229 points from the day's high. The Sensex finally ended special trading session on a flat note at 17,326, up three points.

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The NSE Nifty touched a high of 5,177, and the declined to a low of 5,124 before finally settling almost unchanged at 5,142.

Sterlite surged nearly 3% to Rs 845.

Reliance Communications and Bharti Airtel rallied nearly 2% each to Rs 238 and Rs 333, respectively.

TCS and ACC moved up 1.5% each to Rs 609 and Rs 793, respectively.

ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank, however, slipped 1% each to Rs 948 and Rs 1,703, respectively.

Among non-index gainers - Hindustan Copper zoomed over 5% to Rs 218. IRB Infrastructure, Castrol, Bharat Electronics, Religare, M&M Financial Services, RCF, Balrampur Chini, Century Textiles, Nestle, Rei Agro, Everest Kanto and Yes Bank gained 2-4% each.

GTL Infrastructure, Indiabulls Realestate, Nagarjuna Construction, Biocon, Tech Mahindra, Bhushan Steel, Power Finance, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Sun TV, Cipla and United Spirits were down 1-2% each from the BSE A-group stocks.

SBI topped the value chart with a turnover of Rs 75.35 crore followed by DLF (Rs 66.44 crore), Reliance (Rs 66.11 crore), Bharti Airtel (Rs 47.73 crore) and Reliance Communications (Rs 38.84 crore).

Ispat Industries led the volume chart with trades of around 3.93 million shares followed by Euro Multivision (3.91 million), NHPC (3.36 million), GVK Power (2.51 million) and Unitech (2.31 million.

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