The Bombay Stock Exchange benchmark Sensex on Thursday made gains for the third straight day – up 131 points on sustained buying by funds, especially in IT and metal sectors amid strong gains in the Asian region on signs of growth in major global economies.

Sensex, which had gained 437 points in last two sessions, rose another 131.27 points, 0.76 per cent to 17,431.85.

Similarly, the National Stock Exchange index Nifty rose 34.20 points, or 0.65 per cent to 5,269.90.

Top IT firms Infosys shot up by 0.68 per cent, Tata Consultancy Services by 1.62 per cent and Wipro 3.46 per cent.

Brokers positive cues from Asia followed improving factory output figures from China, the US and Germany for the month of January, easing worries over slowing global growth.

After the Supreme Court quashed 122 telecom licences issued to new operators in 2008, stocks of old player such as Bharti Airtel and Idea rose 6.88 per cent and 2.68 per cent.

Major gainers included Hero MotoCorp, Larsen and Toubro, BHEL, Hindalco, Sterlite Industries, Tata Power, DLF Ltd., Gail India, Maruti Suzuki, SBI, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Coal India.

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Besides, according to government sources, the weekly data were not giving any “clear and holistic” picture of the inflation situation.

The Ministry of Commerce and Industry compiles and releases the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) data on primary articles and fuel and power every week, mostly on Thursdays. The primary articles include food items.

The government also releases monthly data on overall or headline inflation measured on WPI. The food inflation has a weight of about 14 per cent in the overall inflation.

Food inflation stood at (-) 1.03 for the week ended 14th January, according to the data released last week. Headline for December was 7.47 per cent.

In September 2010, the government had changed the base year for calculating WPI to 2004-05 from 1993-94.

The new WPI series has 241 more items than in the old index. With the additional items, the WPI now measures a total of 676 items against 435 earlier.

Earlier, the government used to release the overall inflation data on weekly basis.

But in October 2009, it changed the calendar and decided to release the comprehensive data on inflation on a monthly basis, but continued to release price movement of primary articles, including food, and fuel every week.