Sensex hovers around 17000; Bank Nifty up 1%

The BSE Sensex was consistently hovering around the 17000 level and the Nifty around 5150 level in afternoon trade; both benchmarks gained 0.5% each. The Bank Nifty climbed 1% as private sector lender ICICI Bank rallied 1.5% while its rival HDFC Bank rose 1.4%.

The BSE benchmark moved up 84.31 points to 16,990.89 and the NSE benchmark was up 28.65 points at 5,149.45. Midcap and Smallcap indices were up 0.4% each.

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Country's largest software services exporters TCS and Infosys were up 1.5% and 1%, respectively.

Cigarette major ITC, engineering and construction major by sales Larsen & Toubro and housing finance company HDFC gained over 0.5%.

Among others, shares of Tata Steel, Sun Pharma, Coal India, NTPC, Hindalco and GAIL were up 1-1.5%.

However, top commercial vehicle maker Tata Motors fell 1.4% and utility vehicle manufacturer M&M lost 0.5%.

Oil & gas producers Reliance Industries and ONGC declined 0.5% each.

Most active shares on exchanges were SBI, Container Corporation, HDIL, Manappuram Finance, Reliance Infrastructure, Infosys, Tata Motors and ICICI Bank.

In the second line shares, Himadri Chemical, Manappuram Finance, Polaris Tech, MindTree and Shree Global rallied 5-10% whereas Andhra Bank, Educomp Solutions, Tata Communications, KSK Energy Ventures and DB Realty fell 2-5%.