The Sensex, which went crashing down by around 375 points to 13,731.54 in early trade this morning, staged a smart recovery and regained a significant portion of lost ground now thanks to some strong buying in a few blue chip stocks. However, following a fresh round of selling in a few front line stocks, it has declined sharply into the red once again.

At 13,946.48, nearly 100 points down from a high of 14,045.43 it had touched a few minutes back, the Sensex is down with a loss of 160.10 points or 1.13% now. The Nifty is down by 0.55% or 23.10 points at 4168.

BHEL, ONGC, Ranbaxy Laboratories and Tata Consultancy Services have gained 1.5% - 2% on firm buying enquiries. Reliance Industries has moved up by 0.85% to Rs 2083.50. Ambuja Cements, Bharti Airtel, Grasim Industries, Larsen & Toubro and NTPC have posted marginal gains.

ACC, Hindustan Unilever, Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Steel have trimmed down their losses. Cipla, ITC, Jaiprakash Associates, Maruti Suzuki, Reliance Communications, State Bank of India, Tata Motors and Wipro have also come off their lower levels.

DLF, HDFC, Infosys Technologies and Satyam Computer Services are down with sharp losses.

Nifty stock Idea Cellular has rallied to Rs 101.30, netting a sharp gain of 2.2%. Tata Communications remains steady with a gain of nearly 2%. BPCL, Sterlite Industries, Suzlon Energy, SAIL, GAIL India and Reliance Petroleum are up with sharp to moderate gains.

Hero Honda, Nalco, HCL Technologies, Power Grid, Punjab National Bank, ABB, Sun Pharmaceuticals, Cairn India, Unitech and Tata Power are among the prominent losers in the Nifty index.