Indian benchmark equity indices opened higher on Friday tracking strong global cues and sustained buying in almost all sectors, particularly public sector banks, realty, metal and FMCG. The minutes of the Reserve Bank of India's Monetary Policy Committee meeting released on Thursday reinforced the belief that central bank may choose to stand pat on rates for a while.

Share Market Live

NSE

The BSE Sensex jumped 190 points to 37,853.41, rising by half a percent in initial trade. The NSE Nifty 50 started at 11,437, rising by 0.46 percent.

Shares of Vedanta, Hindalco, Bharti Infratel, Yes Bank, Tata Steel were among top index gainers, surging by up to 1.87 percent in opening trade. Weakness was seen in very few stocks. Bharti Airtel, HDFC, Wipro, Hindustan Unilever slid by up to 0.69 percent.

BSE MidCap surged by 0.67, while smallcap and largecap also surged over half a percent. Among BSE sectoral indices, basic materials, metal, surged by up to 1.52 percent with none out of the 19 sectoral indices trading in the negative zone.

Other major gainers among sectoral indices were realty, bankex, auto,industrials, while IT and Teck were marginally higher.

Nifty MidCap surged by 0.52 percent, while only Nifty IT traded in the red among sectoral indices on the NSE. Nifty Bank gained by 0.61 percent, Nifty PSU Bank was up 1.16 percent. Other notable gainers were Nifty Metal at 1.48 percent, realty at 1.13 percent and FMCG at 0.79 percent.

Among PSU Bank stocks, Bank of India surged by 2.5 percent, Union Bank 2 percent, PNB nearly 2 percent and Andhra Bank, Bank of Baroda, Canara Bank rose between 1.5 and 1.6 percent.

The money market is closed on account of Parsi New Year. The Indian rupee collapsed to a historic intra-day trading low of 70.40 before closing at fresh life-time low of 70.15 per dollar on Thursday, down by 26 paise or 0.37 per cent over the previous close.

Asian markets traded higher. At 09.30 am IST, Hong Kong's Hang Seng was up by 0.59 percent, while Japan's Nikkei rose by 0.38 percent.

Also, catch all the action and updates in our Market Live blog

.

You can also track Kerala flood updates in our Live blog.