Indian benchmark indices erased the majority of the day’s gain and turned flat during the last hour deals on Wednesday, mainly because of stocks of the public sector banks.
After entering into the negative zone the benchmark indices rebounded and entered the green territory. The S&P BSE Sensex and Nifty50 index pared some of the gains in the afternoon session and were off their day’s high.
Sensex traded up 238.19 points at 31,691.70, or 0.76%, while the Nifty50 index was near 9,266 levels.
Bajaj Finance, at 5.48%, led the gains on Sensex and Mahindra & Mahindra followed with 5.12%. HDFC Bank was at 3.63%, ICICI Bank 3.23% and Indus Bank at 1.74%.
HCL Tech, Asian Paints and Nestle India were among the loser.
Oil marketing companies’ shares also declined after the Centre hiked excise duty on petrol and diesel and asked the OMCs to absorb the price hike.
The Nifty sectoral indices were mixed.
(With agency inputs)