India's key share market index rose over one percent Thursday, touching a new all-time high, after official figures showed that the country's economy grew at a sharply faster clip in the quarter ended March 31.

The stock market barometer 30-share Bombay Stock Exchange sensitive index or Sensex closed at 7,193.85, representing a gain of 73.97 points or 1.04 percent over its previous session's close.

The market benchmark bettered its previous all time closing high of 7,151.08 touched Monday on large-scale across the board institutional buying.

India's blue-chip equities have soared sharply higher in the last couple of weeks' trade on hopes that a normal monsoon would boost economic growth in the current fiscal year in Asia's fourth largest economy.

The rally, which has made Indian bourses one of best performing stock exchanges globally in the current year, has also been helped by the resolution of a seven-month ownership slugfest in private corporate behemoth Reliance Industries.

Dealers said the stock market opened Thursday on a positive note and inched higher in the early trade despite selling pressure on technology heavyweight Wipro after it announced the resignation of a senior executive.

The positive rally on the bourses gained momentum in the second half of the trade after it was announced that the country's economy expanded by a faster than expected rate in the first quarter of the current calendar year.

The economy recorded an impressive seven percent growth in the January-March quarter on the back of a sharp jump in agricultural output, said an official statistical agency Thursday.

The agricultural sector posted a growth of 1.8 percent in the January-March quarter, up from a fall of 0.5 percent in the previous quarter that ended Dec 31, 2004.

"There is a feeling inside the trading ring that the bullish economic data would encourage more and more foreign investors to pump in funds into the domestic stock market," said an analyst with a domestic brokerage firm.

"There is lot of optimism in the market about the economic growth in the current fiscal year as well as the corporate earnings performance in the April-June quarter," the analyst added.

A string of Indian companies like Infosys Technologies, Wipro and Tata Motors will start unveiling April-June quarterly financial numbers from the first week of next month.

Foreign institutional investors, which act as the backbone for the liquidity starved domestic capital market, have invested more than $1 billion in Indian equities in June.

In the old economy sector, shares of public sector energy giant Oil and Natural Gas Corp gained nearly three percent to touch Rs.1,024 on fresh institutional buying interest.

Shares of consumer goods companies like Dabur rose 3.6 percent to Rs.131.50 and Hindustan Lever was up 0.8 percent at Rs.164 on hopes that a normal monsoon would increase their sales.

In the technology sector, shares of Hyderabad-based Satyam Computer rose 3.4 percent to Rs.506 and Infosys Technologies, India's second largest software exporter, ended 1.1 percent higher at Rs.2,350.