Indian shares rose on Thursday, snapping a two-session losing streak, on hopes Parliament would consider a key reform on goods and services tax.
Short-covering by participants as today being the last trading session of November contracts in the derivatives segment also supported the trading sentiment.
Hopes for the GST tax were rising as the idea of setting a relatively low rate for new Indian sales tax seemed to be gaining traction, as politicians of all stripes met to debate what would be the country's biggest tax reform since independence.
The Bill has passed the Lower House of Parliament, but has been blocked in the Upper House. Legislators started their winter session on Thursday, which will continue until December 23.
"GST, that's the key reason why the market is holding on and some amount of short-covering on the last day of expiry," said Alex Mathews head of research at Geojit BNP Paribas.
The 30-share BSE index Sensex ended higher by 182.89 points or 0.71 per cent at 25,958.63 and the 50-share NSE index Nifty ended up by 52.2 points or 0.67 per cent at 7,883.80.
Barring healthcare and capital goods, all other BSE sectoral indices ended in the green. Among them, realty index gained the most by 1.8 per cent, followed by auto 1.29 per cent, infrastructure 1.27 per cent and metal 1.07 per cent, while healthcare index was down 0.53 per cent and capital goods 0.23 per cent.
Top five Sensex gainers were Tata Motors (+5.51%), Sun Pharma (+3.96%), GAIL (+3.33%), M&M (+2.06%) and Reliance (+2.04%), while the major losers were Dr Reddy's (-8.21%), Lupin (-1.24%), TCS (-1.05%), Bajaj Auto (-0.66%) and Maruti (-0.63%).
Logistics company Gati gained 5.74 per cent on hopes of GST being cleared
Drugmaker Sun Pharmaceutical Industries rose after the company on Wednesday said its unit would not go ahead with a wind energy project in the United States.
Shares in National Aluminium Co were up 4.81 per cent after the company had on Tuesday said it received $8 million towards an out of court settlement from a US firm.
Hero MotoCorp fell 1.34 per cent but recovered to end 1.32 per cent higher after US private equity firm Bain Capital sold stake in the company.
However, Dr Reddy's Laboratories fell over 8 per cent after the US Food and Drug Administration released details of its warning letter issued to the drugmaker earlier in November.
A report by SMC Global said: "Asian shares advanced in early trade, while growing bets the European Central Bank was gearing up to deliver further stimulus steps kept the euro under pressure. Overnight, US stocks ended mostly unchanged as consumer discretionary and healthcare shares battled losses in other sectors on the last full trading day of the week. US new home sales jumped 10.7 per cent to an annual rate of 495,000 in October after slumping 12.9 per cent to a revised 447,000 in September. Economists had expected new home sales to climb to a rate of 499,000 from the 468,000 originally reported for the previous month."
European shares edged higher in early deals on Thursday, with a solid quarterly report from Infineon and gains among mining stocks on a rebound in metal prices providing support.
The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index was up 0.4 per cent by 0826 GMT, having gained 1.4 percent in the previous session, while the Euro STOXX 50 was up 0.3 per cent.
Asian shares advanced in early trade on Thursday, while growing bets the European Central Bank was gearing up to deliver further stimulus steps kept the euro under pressure.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan edged up about 0.4 per cent, after Wall Street put in a nearly flat performance ahead of the US Thanksgiving holiday.