New Delhi: Indian key equity benchmarks — Sensex and Nifty — have edged higher in trade on the back of consistent buying support in index such as Reliance Industries (RIL), ITC, and Infosys on Thursday.


The BSE Sensex was up over 454 points at 58,795, while the NSE Nifty advanced 121 points to 17,536.


Heavyweights such as RIL, Infosys, Kotak Mahindra Bank lift Sensex by 454 points.


However, in the early morning trade Sensex slipped over 100 points on Thursday, tracking losses in index majors ICICI Bank, HDFC twins, and SBI amid persistent foreign fund outflows. But soon it gave up intra-day losses with Sensex touching as much as 758 points from the day’s lowest level, while Nifty 50 reclaimed its psychological level of 17,500 after hitting an intra-day low of 17,351.


Despite starting slightly higher, the 30-share index turned red to trade 125.54 points or 0.22 per cent lower at 58,215.45. Similarly, the Nifty was trading 30.15 points or 0.17 per cent down at 17,384.90.


Stocks of RIL zoomed to a high of Rs 2,503, and ended with a gain of 6.3 per cent at Rs 2,499 after the company decided to implement a scheme of arrangement to transfer gasification undertaking into a wholly-owned subsidiary.


According to RIL, repurposing the ‘Gasification’ assets will help use 'syngas' as a reliable source of feedstock to produce these chemicals and cater to growing domestic demand, resulting in an attractive business opportunity.


Gains in oil and gas, IT, and pharmaceuticals shares pushed the headline indices higher, however, losses in financial and automobile stocks limited the upside.


Bank Nifty and India VIX ended with losses on Thursday.


Sensex recovered well on Thursday after it closed at 58,340, down 332 points. The Nifty index, which ended its day’s trade with a loss of 88 points at 17,415 on Wednesday, gained 121 points before closing.