Sensex, Nifty clock 4th successive loss; AGR woes hit telecom, financial stocks

Equity benchmark indices Sensex and Nifty closed in the red for the fourth session in a row on Tuesday as the ongoing AGR issue weighed on telecom and financial stocks.

After trading in the deep red for a better part of the session, the BSE gauge Sensex reclaimed most of its lost ground towards the fag-end. At the closing bell, the index was down 161.31 points or 0.39 per cent at 40,894.38.

Intra-day, the Sensex fell over 444 points and touched the day's low of 40,610.95.

The NSE barometer Nifty too staged a late recovery from the day's low and settled at 11,992.50, showing a fall of 53.30 points or 0.44 per cent.

On the Sensex chart, Bharti Airtel was the biggest loser with nearly 3 per cent drop in its share price. It was followed by IndusInd Bank, Maruti Suzuki, HeroMoto Corp and Tata Steel.

In contrast, SBI, Infosys, PowerGrid, Tech Mahindra and TCS featured among major gainers.

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to stop the telecom department from taking any coercive steps for recovery of dues from Vodafone Idea.

Shares of Vodafone Idea on Tuesday tanked more than 16 per cent in intra-day trade due to rating downgrade on AGR dues and other issues of the company

Asian markets, barring China, closed with heavy losses.

Meanwhile, worries over rising death toll and the economic fallout from the novel coronavirus continued to haunt investors globally.

The coronavirus epidemic that emerged in central China has now killed nearly 1,800 people and spread around the world.

The death toll from China's coronavirus epidemic climbed to 1,868 on Tuesday as 98 more people died while the total number of confirmed cases jumped to 72,436.