Mumbai: Sensex crashed over 1,170 points to log its worst single-day drop in over seven months on Monday amid concerns over government's reform measures after farm laws repeal announcement and weak listing of country's largest fintech firm Paytm. Extending its losses for the fourth straight session, the BSE gauge plunged 1,170.12 points or 1.96% to settle the day at 58,465.89 -- its lowest closing level in over two months. In terms of absolute single-session drop, this was the biggest fall since April 12.
Similarly, the NSE Nifty fell 348.25 points or 1.96% to 17,416.55 -- marking its lowest level seen after September 20. Among top losers on the Sensex were Bajaj Finance, Bajaj Finserv, Reliance Industries, NTPC, Titan and SBI, diving as much as 5.74%.
Reliance Industries sank over 4% after the company shelved a proposed deal to sell a 20% stake in its oil refinery and petrochemical business to Saudi Aramco for an asking of $15 billion.
On the other hand, Bharti Airtel, Asian Paints and PowerGrid managed to clock gains. One97 Communications, Paytm's parent firm, tumbled over 13 per cent to close at 1,360.30 a share on the BSE. Sectorally, BSE realty, energy, consumer durables, auto, oil and gas, and finance indices fell up to 4.45%, while telecom and metal indices ended with gains. Broader midcap and smallcap indices fell up to 2.96%.
“Finally the bears got their act together after a long wait as a series of events over the weekend gave them the upper hand with almost all the sectoral indices barring the metal index plunging,” said S Ranganathan, head of research at LKP Securities.
The repealing of the agriculture laws had an impact on the PSU stocks while the O2C deal not going through left a 4.5% cut on Reliance, he noted.
