Automobile stock surges help Sensex close positively

A benchmark index of the Indian equities markets closed Tuesday's trade 29 points up as automobile and information technology (IT) stocks gained.

Market sentiment was muted ahead of Wednesday's vote on account for railways and data on consumer inflation.

The 30-scrip S&P Sensex of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), which opened at 20,400.94 points, ended the day at 20,363.37 points -- up 29.10 points or 0.14% from its previous day's close at 20,334.27 points.

The Sensex hit a high of 20,443.35 points and low of 20,349.51 points intra-day.

The wider 50-scrip Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) closed 9.25 points or 0.15% higher at 6,062.70 points.

Scrip of Reliance Industries (RIL) was down after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal ordered the city-state's anti-corruption wing to file a criminal case against chairman Mukesh Ambani, among others, for alleged artificial scarcity of natural gas and fixing prices.

Kejriwal also demanded that the gas fields allocated to Reliance Industries in the Krishna-Godavari basin off the Andhra Pradesh coast be taken back and handed over to the state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp.

Among the sectoral indices of the BSE, oil and gas, healthcare and power stocks declined, while automobile, information technology (IT) and bank scrip ended in the positive territory.

The BSE oil and gas index was down 48.69 points, while the healthcare index fell 33.12 points and power index slipped 15.76 points.

However, the automobile index was up 91.26 points, followed by IT index, up 89.99 points, and bank index, up 39.24 points.

Prominent Sensex gainers were - Tata Motors up 2.83% at Rs.374.30; Tata Steel, up 2.00% at Rs.390.15; ONGC, up 1.40% at Rs.275.80; HDFC, up 1.17% at Rs.775.20; and ICICI Bank, up 1.00% at Rs.969.10.

Sixteen of the 30 Sensex scrips closed in the red. These included NTPC, down 2.21% at Rs.132.70; Hindalco Inds, down 2.01% at Rs.104.70; Reliance Industries, down 1.96% at Rs.805.50; Hero MotoCorp, down 1.83% at Rs.1,960.85; and Maruti Suzuki, down 0.82% at Rs.1,675.10.

Among the Asian markets, Japan's Nikkei closed 1.77% up, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 1.78%. China's Shanghai Composite Index gained by 0.84%.

In Europe, London's FTSE 100 was trading 0.80% up. Germany's DAX Index was higher by 1.22%, while the French CAC 40 Index was up 0.64%.