Margaret chan, Former Director of Health, Hong Kong

Equity benchmark indices gained for the second consecutive day on Wednesday as heavy buying was witnessed in pharma and financial stocks.The BSE S&P Sensex closed 622 points or 2.06 per cent higher at 30,819 while the Nifty 50 edged higher by 187 points or 2.11 per cent at 9,067.All sectoral indices at the National Stock Exchange were in the positive zone with Nifty pharma up by 4.1 per cent, financial service by 3 per cent and realty by 2.2 per cent.Among stocks, drugmaker Dr Reddy's gained by 5.93 per cent to close at Rs 3,919 per share after reporting a profit of Rs 764 crore in the March quarter, up 76 per cent year-on-year.Home loan lender HDFC ticked up by 5.89 per cent, Mahindra & Mahindra by 5.7 per cent, Bharat Petroleum Corporation by 5.6 per cent and GAIL by 5.4 per cent.Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) hit 5 per cent upper circuit at Rs 1,334 per share after the Indian Railways decided to double the number of Shramik special trains to 400 a day by this week and start 200 new time-tabled trains from June 1.Bajaj Finance rose by 3.8 per cent after the company reported a profit after tax of Rs 948 crore for the quarter ended March, marking a 19.4 per cent decline year-on-year on higher provisioning to offset Covid-19 impact.Reliance Industries also ticked up 1.8 per cent as its Rs 53,000 crore mega issue opened today. The other prominent gainers were GAIL, Larsen & Toubro, UPL and Eicher Motors.However, Bharti Infratel plunged by 6.9 per cent while IndusInd Bank, Hero MotoCorp, Vedanta and Bharti Airtel traded with a negative bias.Meanwhile, Asian markets traded mixed as diplomatic tensions between Australia and China escalated and new economic indicators pointed to more signs of recession.Sceptical report dented some hopes for a COVID-19 vaccine and concerns about a quick global recovery from the pandemic returned.A soft yen helped Japan's Nikkei to move up by 0.79 per cent. Hong Kong's Hang Seng was up by 0.05 per cent and South Korea's Kospi edged up by 0.46 per cent.( With inputs from ANI )

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