Sensex, Nifty close lower on budget impact, PSU bank, pharma stocks fall

Key benchmark indices ended lower on Thursday after finance minister announced a long term capital gains tax for investing in equities. Bonds were range-bound, with Indian-rupee weakening against US dollar. 

Finance Minister has revised his fiscal deficit target for 2018 - 19 to 3.3 percent of GDP against the earlier target of 3 percent, after breaching the deficit target for 2017-18. 

The BSE Sensex closed lower by 58.36 points to 35,906.66, while the NSE Nifty-50 slipped 10.80 points to close at 11,016.90. 

Among the BSE sectoral indices, stocks of consumer durables, energy, healthcare, and oil and gas fell up to 1.73%, while on NSE, Nifty PSU Bank declined 1.98 percent, capital goods 1.40% and auto stocks zoomed 0.56%. Losses were mostly seen in consumer durables, pharma stocks and energy stocks, while Capital goods and auto sector stocks witnessed majority of the buying action. 

Mahindra & Mahindra, Eicher Motors, Bajaj Finance, L&T, Bajaj Auto are top gainers on NSE, on the other hand Sun pharma, ONGC, Dr. Reddys, Aurbindo pharma and Lupin were losers.