Sensex Plunges 1,700 Points, Nearly Rs 8 Lakh Crores Wealth Destroyed

Heavy selling pressure in banking and financials on fears of a lockdown in states like Maharashtra and rising Covid 19 cases, dragged the benchmark indices lower. The rupee too weakened adding to selling pressure on the indices/

The Sensex fell a mammoth 1,700 points dragged down by banking and financial stocks names like ICICI Bank, State Bank of India, IndusInd Bank and Bajaj Finance. The Nifty ended lower by 524 points, while the Bank Nifty was down almost 6 per cent.

Among sector losers, the biggest was the PSU banking space, with Punjab National Bank falling a massive 10 per cent in trade. Pharma stocks like Cipla managed to remain resilient today.

Shares in Tata Consultancy Services traded 1.7 per cent lower at Rs 3,265 on the NSE, outperforming the market, ahead of its January-March 2021 (Q4FY21) results.

Fears of lockdown in Maharashtra and night curfew in various states over the rising number of Covid-19 cases have led to worries of a sharp slowdown in the Indian economy for the first quarter of financial year 2021-22.

The country reported 1.7 lakh Covid-19 cases till late evening on Sunday, marking the biggest single-day spike ever since pandemic began last year. In fact, cases from several states like Maharashtra, Punjab, Karnataka have been on the rise.