5:00 PM Mumbai, 8:30 AM New York – Stocks in Mumbai fluctuated and closed higher. Soros plans to buy Dubai Holding’s 4% stake in the BSE. Accenture awarded a two-year contract by UIDAI. Telecom department tighten rules and collect more data on subscribers. Bajaj Corp plans an IPO in August.

Stocks in India fluctuated and closed higher after swinging between gains and losses more than fifteen times.

The Sensex index in India increased 34.63 or 0.19% to 17,992.00 and CNX Nifty index rose 6.80 or 0.13% to 5,404.35. Among the Sensex 30 stocks, 17 rose and 13 fell.

On BSE trading, 1,415 stocks advanced, 1,408 declined and 121 were unchanged.

Rupee edged higher 7 paisa to 46.68 against one dollar.

The wholesale price index in India increased 0.4% to 308.8 from 307.5 for the previous week. For the year ending in the week average inflation surged to 14.50% compared to 8.18% in the same period a year ago.

George Soros is in the final round of negotiations to buy Dubai Holding’s 4% stake in the Bombay Stock Exchange. Soros Fund Management plans to pay about $40 million for this stake valuing Asia’s oldest bourse at about $1 billion, Financial Times reported.

Reliance Industries Ltd, Essar Oil are among about half a dozen firms in race to buy crisis-hit British energy giant BP’s fuel marketing assets in East African countries. Reliance and Essar have offered between $400 million to $500 million for these assets.

Reliance Industries Ltd has bought out the loss making polyester plant of Bombay Dyeing for just under Rs 300 crore beating the offers of Indo Rama and JBF Industries, according to a news item in the economic times.

India’s largest real estate firm DLF Ltd is likely to bring in a strategic Indian investor in DLF Life Insurance, its joint venture with U.S.-based Prudential International Holdings. The successful investor may acquire up to 44% stake in the insurance firm to become its largest shareholder, according to a report in Economic Times.

A consortium headed by Greenko Group, one of India’s fastest growing power producer, has proposed to set up an ‘Energy and Oil City’ at Sonepur in Ganjam district of Orissa at an investment of Rs 15,000 crore. The project would include a port, a ship building unit, a 1000 megawatt gas-based power plant, a desalination plant with a capacity of 120 million liters a day and a modern township to accommodate 10,000 people, Business Standard reported.

The Unique Identification Authority of India has awarded a contract to consulting firm Accenture to implement the core biometric identification system in support of the “Aadhaar” program that aims at providing all citizens with a unique identification number.

Under the terms of the initial contract, which will run up to two years or until 20 crore enrollments, Accenture will build a new system to help manage identity-related de-duplication and verification requests from public and private organizations.

Department of Telecommunications on Wednesday amended telecom license agreements asking equipment suppliers to share all codes and design details, besides making provision for severe penalties against defaulters.

In a communication to all license holders, including state-owned BSNL and MTNL, DoT said in view of national security concerns, equipment suppliers would have to share all codes and design details.

A day after the central bank raised its short-term policy rates to rein in inflation, State Bank of India, the nation’s premier bank said, deposit rates are likely to increase soon. HDFC Bank, a leading private sector bank, raised its deposit rates by 25 basis points to 75 basis points for different maturities.

Lakshmi Vilas Bank, a small private sector bank based in South India, also decided to increase rates on deposits by 25 to 50 basis points with effect from August 2.

The Manufacturer’s Association for Information Technology on Wednesday said, over 80,00,000 personal computers were sold in 2009-10, registering a growth of 18% over the previous year thanks to increased spending on IT products and improved consumer confidence.

Releasing the findings of its ‘Industry Performance Review’ for last fiscal, MAIT President Ravi Aggarwal said, “The impact of global economic recession is now well behind us and the IT hardware industry in India is once again on a revival path.”

Bajaj Corp Limited, a leading producer of hair oils in India plans to list the company through an offering of 4,500,000 shares of Rs 5 each in the price to be priced in the range of Rs 630 to Rs 660 each.