The market opened weak in the backdrop of bearish global sentiment over the elections in France and Greece, which once again stirred worries about eurozone debt crisis, and amid weak US job data. It continued to remain subdued in the absence of any definite directions.
The late afternoon session saw market paring losses after tabling of Finance Bill, 2012 in Lok Sabha. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR) will be implemented with effect from April 1, 2013 instead of April 2012.
The announcement triggered aggressive buying towards the closing hours and led the market to end in green. Auto, banking, infra, metal and PSU counters attracted good buying interest, while FMCG, oil & energy and pharma suffered losses.
The 50-share index dropped to a low of 4,988, before rebounding to a high of 5,124.75 and closed at 5,114.15, a gain of 27.30 points, or 0.54 per cent, over its last close.
BHEL, BPCL, L&T, Jindal Steel, DLF, Grasim, Reliance Infra, Maruti, IDFC and Asian Paint were the top percentwise gainers from Nifty.
However, Cairn, J P Associates, HCL Tech, Dr Reddy's, Reliance, PowerGrid, HUL, PNB, HDFC Bank and wipro registered losses.
Turnover in cash segment rose to Rs 11,678.32 crore from Rs 11,474.63 crore last Friday. In all, 7,224.46 lakh shares changed hands in 60,94,346 trades. Market capitalisation stood at Rs 59,12,081 crore.
