Today, the BSE-benchmark Sensex opened the day in a good mode, but heavy profit booking led by investors dragged the market to end in red territory.  

The benchmark dropped precipitously lower and tanked around 2% as intense selling pressure was witnessed in key index stocks, which started during afternoon trading session, and continued till the close of market session.

Once again, the election factor, as polling is going on for India's 15th Lok Sabha, was held responsible for volatile session on the bourses.   

The BSE Sensex closed lower by 240.51 points at 11,876.43 while, NSE Nifty ended down by 63.20 points at 3,620.70. The Sensex touched intraday high of 12,180.07 and intraday low of 11,765.06.  

However, BSE Mid Caps Index closed the day with minor loss of 6.52 points at 3,770.42 while Small Caps settled with gain of 13.66 at 4,277.26.  
 
The market opened on Friday, on a flat note tracking mixed cues from the global markets but turned very volatile during mid afternoon trading hours and continued to extend their losses further on negative news of inflation data.

Inflation surged to 0.70% for the week ended April 25 on account of higher prices of essential food articles like cereals, pulses, vegetable, milk and sugar. The wholesale price-based index stood at 8.27 per cent during the corresponding week a year ago.  

On the sectoral front, most of the selling was witnessed in Bank (-3.21%), Metal (-2.52%), IT (-2.15%), Tech (-1.93%), Power (-1.72%), Reality (-1.13%) and Health Care (1.02%) stocks.

In today’s trading session, Consumer Durable related stocks were the only seen active in the market with buying interest. The Consumer Durables index closed the day with gain of +1.89%.

Losers from the BSE Sensex pack were Wipro Ltd (6.59%), ICICI Bank (5.19%), Maruti Reliance Infra (5.07%), Glenmark Pharma (5.04%), Sterlite Industries (4.93%), M&M Ltd (4.28%), HDFC (4.19%), RCom (4.11%),Tata Steel (4.03%), ACC Ltd (3.55%), BHEL (3.44%) and Reliance Capital (3.77%).
 
Gainers from the BSE Sensex pack were Aban Offshore (6.51%), Bajaj Finserve (4.63%), Indiabulls (4.98%), Ashok Leyland (4%), JP Associates (2.53%), Educomp Solution (2.18%), Housing Development (1.91%), Crompton Greaves (1.72%), Essar Oil (1.28%), HUL (0.98%), Gmr Infrastructure (0.86%)Cairn India (044%), L&T Ltd (0.42%) and Grasim Indus (0.03%).