NEW DELHI: Strong gains in the shares of Idea Cellular (up 14.91 per cent) gave a boost to BSE Telecom index in Tuesday's trade.
The BSE Telecom index was trading 2.51 per cent up at 1,157 around 12:30 pm.Shares of Idea Cellular surged on the back of the telco and Vodafone India clearing their dues of Rs 7,268 crore with the telecom department, which paves the way for their merger.
On Monday, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular paid the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) Rs 3,926.34 crore (in cash) and bank guarantee of Rs 3,322.44 crore respectively, that was sought as a key condition for approving their merger, thereby clearing the final obstacle in the largest MA in the sector which will create India's biggest carrier.
Aksh Optifibre (up 9.44 per cent), Tejas Networks (up 8.17 per cent), Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) (up 4.38 per cent), Vindhya Telelinks (up 3.96 per cent), MTNL (up 3.72 per cent), GTL (up 3.38 per cent), Reliance Communications (up 3.17 per cent) and Tata Communications (up 3.09 per cent) too were among the top gainers in the index.GTL Infrastructure (up 2.88 per cent), ITI (up 2.80 per cent), Himachal Futuristic Communications (up 2.17 per cent), Sterlite Technologies (up 1.46 per cent), Bharti Airtel (up 1.34 per cent) and OnMobile Global (up 1.19 per cent) were also up.Benchmark BSE Sensex was up 76 points at 36,795, while the NSE Nifty50 index was up 34 points at 11,119.Among the 50 stocks in the Nifty index, 35 were trading in the green, while 15 were in the red.
In the Sensex index, 18 stocks were advancing, while 13 were declining.