Market Now: Bharti Airtel, Tata Tele drag BSE Telecom index down

NEW DELHI: The S&P BSE Telecom index was trading nearly 2 per cent down in Wednesday's morning trade as the index heavyweight Bharti Airtel cracked over 5 per cent.

Shares of Bharti Airtel slipped in early trade after multiple block deals were seen in the counter on both BSE as well as NSE.

According to reports, Qatar based Three Pillars PTE offloaded its entire holding in Bharti Airtel through a block deal.

Shares of Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) (down 4.92 per cent), GTL (down 2.85 per cent), Himachal Futuristic Communications (down 2.20 per cent), GTL Infrastructure (down 1.49 per cent), OnMobile Global (down 1.05 per cent), Tejas Networks (down 0.90 per cent), Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (down 0.61 per cent) and Idea Cellular (down 0.46 per cent) were also declining.

However, shares of Sterlite Technologies (up 3.16 per cent), Bharti Infratel (up 2.40 per cent), Reliance Communications (up 1.93 per cent), Tata Communications (up 1.29 per cent) and Vindhya Telelinks (up 0.83 per cent) were trading up around that time.

Benchmark NSE Nifty50 index was marginally up by 2 points at 10353, while the BSE Sensex was 30 points up at 33,401.

Among the 51 stocks in the Nifty50 index, 26 were trading in the green, while 24 were in the red.

Cipla, Sun Pharma, Axis Bank, Asian Paints, Tata Consultancy Services, Dr Reddy's and Lupin were among the top gainers in the Sensex index.

Bharti Airtel, Reliance Industries, State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Tata Motors and Maruti Suzuki were among the top losers.