Mumbai: Refinery stocks from Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) segment suffered a sharp setback on heavy selling by operators on news of freezing of marketing margins of these companies.

The government has frozen the marketing margin on petrol and diesel for the state-owned companies to mop-up a part of the resources and meet the subsidy bill for cooking gas and kerosene.

As per the market sources due to blocking of margins the bottom-line of these companies would be affected negatively.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened remarkably higher at 4951.11 as against last Friday's close of 4930.53 and after moving sideways, it touched a low of 4903.39 before being quoted at 4925.54 at 10.30 a.m.

Select banking counters like SBI, PNB, OBC, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and few others continued to be in keen demand on good buying.

IT stock displayed a mixed bag on alternate bouts of buying and selling.

Index heavyweights like HLL, SBI, Grasim, L&T, Satyam Computer and Tisco were quoted remarkably up on institutional buying.

Among major gainers, P&G was quoted higher by 5.03 per cent, Aventis Ph by 3.69 per cent, Whirlpool by 3.60 per cent, Merck by 3.34 per cent, D-Link by 3.33 per cent, SSI Ltd by 3.28 per cent, Apollo Hosp by 3.25 per cent, OBC by 2.91 per cent and IOB by 2.91 per cent.

However, SCI dipped by 8.01 per cent, TN News Print by 7.75 per cent, BPCL by 5.28 per cent, HPCL by 3.80 per cent and IOC by 3.28 per cent.

PTI