Nifty closes flat; Bharti, SAIL, ICICI Bk up, RIL, ONGC dip

The benchmark Sensex closed the session on a flat note, after seeing consolidation for major part of the day. The markets were positive for the first couple of hours in early trade, on good US cues.

The sell-off was seen in oil & gas, realty, pharma, select banking and auto stocks while buying in telecom, metal and select power stocks along with Infosys, ICICI Bank, Maruti, HDFC and HUL limited the losses to major extent.

The 30-share BSE Sensex ended at 17,474.49, down 11.57 points, after seeing day's high of 17,590.59 and low of 17,425.05. The 50-share NSE Nifty touched an intraday high of 5,256.70 and low of 5,201.40, before closing at 5,221.70, down 3.95 points.

Oil & gas was the major losing sector; in that oil marketing companies witnessed huge selling pressure might be because of huge under recovery. Director of Finance SK Joshi at BPCL said the company has received Rs 2,371 crore subsidy from the total subsidy of Rs 12,000 crore given by Finance Ministry. However, he said, ''Our total under-recovery stands at Rs 10,000 crore. However, we have received only Rs 4,700 crore from the government and upstream companies.'' The total industry under-recoveries, Joshi said, stood at Rs 45,000-47,000 crore, of which cooking fuel under-recoveries were Rs 31,000 crore.

BPCL tanked 4.5%. HPCL, ONGC and IOC were down 2-3.7%. GAIL was down 1.22%. Cairn India and Reliance Industries fell 0.7% each.

Banking sectore was mixed in trade; ICICI Bank gained 1.59% ahead of its Q3FY10 numbers tomorrow. Bank of Baroda and PNB were up 0.9-1.2% while HDFC Bank and SBI slipped 0.6-1.2%.