Sensex rises 200 pts and Nifty50 tops 17,400 ahead of RBI policy announcement

HDFC Life, Kotak Mahindra Bank, HCL Tech, SBI Life, Grasim and Shree Cement — up around half a percent each — were also among the top blue-chip gainers.

On the other hand, ONGC, Britannia, Tata Consumer, Cipla, NTPC, Bajaj Finserv and Nestle — down up to one percent — were the worst hit among the laggards.

Reliance, Infosys, Larsen & Toubro, Bharti Airtel and Hindustan Unilever were the biggest contributors to the gain in both main indices.

The Nifty Bank — which tracks the performance of 12 major lenders in the country including SBI, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Axis Bank — rose as much as 0.3 percent in early deals.

Half of the bankers in a CNBC-TV18 poll expect the RBI to announce a hike in the repo rate — the key interest rate at which it lends money to commercial banks — by 35 basis points later in the day.

"The RBI's rate action on Friday is unlikely to impact the market. The most likely scenario of a 30-35 bps hike is already known and discounted. The market will be looking forward to the RBI's commentary on inflation, GDP growth for the year ending March 2023 and macroeconomic indicators such as the current account deficit," said VK Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist at Geojit Financial Services.

"The momentum now is influenced by global cues and strong FII buying... FII buying in sectors like capital goods, FMCG, construction and power is likely to impart resilience to these segments," he said.

Overall market breadth was in favour of the bulls, as 1,733 stocks rose and 772 fell on BSE.

Equities in other Asian markets began Friday in the green following a mixed session on Wall Street overnight. MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.6 percent at the last count. Japan's Nikkei 225 was up 0.7 percent.

S&P 500 futures were up 0.3 percent. The S&P 500 slid 0.1 percent and the Dow Jones 0.3 percent. The tech stocks-heavy Nasdaq Composite climbed up 0.4 percent.