Sensex Falls 38 Points, Nifty Settles Below 11,600

The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 indexes settled lower on Thursday led by losses in banking and IT shares. However, gains in Bharti Airtel, Reliance Industries and HCL Technologies capped the declines. The Sensex fell as much as 218.07 points and the Nifty 50 index dropped as much as 69.45 points to slip below 11,600. The benchmarks opened higher but soon turned volatile and switched direction at least 8 times before settling with losses. The S&P BSE Sensex closed 38.44 points, or 0.10 per cent, lower at 39,020.39 while the NSE Nifty ended at 11,582.40, down 21.70 points from the previous close.

Bharti Infratel, Grasim, Yes Bank, State Bank of India (SBI) and GAIL were among the prominent losers in the Nifty 50 basket of shares. Infosys, SBI and HDFC Bank were the top contributors to the declines on Sensex.

The Nifty PSU banking index settled 3.50 per cent lower, while Nifty IT index ended 0.49 per cent lower.

Shares of Infosys closed over 2 per cent lower after the firm said that the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had started a probe into the whistleblower complaints that were flagged earlier this week.

The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance was on the road to power in Maharashtra while Haryana was seen going for a hung assembly, Election Commission trends indicated as votes for the assembly polls held this week were counted on Thursday.    

Meanwhile, the rupee depreciated 11 paise to 71 against the dollar intra-day. Brent crude futures, the global oil benchmark, fell 0.47 per cent to $ 60.88 per barrel.