The BSE benchmark
Sensex on Thursday fell 168 points on profit booking in bluechips on concerns of slow growth and government's share sale in ONGC attracting buyers away from other stocks.
Realty and capital goods stocks extended losses.
The Sensex fell 168.71 points, or 0.95 per cent, to 17,583.97 on mounting worries over the slowing economy after the third quarter numbers for this fiscal showed yesterday that GDP growth was just 6.1 per cent, lowest in over two years.
The NSE 50-share Nifty also fell by 45.45 points, or 0.84 per cent, to 5,339.75.
A weak trend in the Asian markets fuelled the selling pressure, while a higher openings in Europe capped the losses.
Reliance Industries and Infosys - top Sensex heavyweight - lost 1.01 per cent and 0.93 per cent respectively.
Shares of
ONGC also turned weak after an initial spike, as bids came in for the auction for sale of the government's stake in the company public sector energy giant. It fell 1.87 per cent.
Among other major losers, L&T, BHEL, M&M, Tata Motors, SBI, ICICI, HDFC Bank and Tata steel fell over 3.6 per cent.
The realty sector index suffered the most by losing 3.29 per cent to 1,891.17 followed by capital goods index by 1.62 per cent to 10,257.96. Bank index lost 1.20 per cent to 11,830.87 and oil and gas index by 0.95 per cent to 8,629.23.
Shares of various public sector companies on Thursday defied the weak broader market trend and gained up to 5 per cent after the government approved buyback of shares by certain PSUs as part of the divestment programme.
While, the names of potential buyback candidates are yet to be known, some the gainers in the PSU counter were - MMTC, Coal India, NMDC, Shipping Corporation, MTNL, HMT, STC, Hindustan Copper, Engineers India, and NHPC.
STC was the biggest gainer in the PSU pack and settled for the day with a gain of over 4.99 per cent at the BSE. MTNL gained 4.65 per cent, HMT by about 4.15 per cent and NDMC jumped by over 2.14 per cent in a weak market.
Rashtriya Chemicals, NMDC and National Fertiliser settled with over 2 per cent gain, while Shipping Corporation, EIL, and MMTC ended the day higher by over 1.80 per cent.
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