Indian equity benchmarks continued to trade in the positive territory during the late morning deals on Wednesday as participants raised bets for rate cut ahead of the RBI policy meet scheduled for later in the day amid positive cues from fellow Asian peers.

At 11:10 hours, the 30-share barometer index of Bombay Stock Exchange, Sensex was at 26,444.98, up by 52.22 points or 0.2 per cent while the NSE Nifty was at 8,163.5 up by 20.35 points or 0.25 per cent.

The RBI policy meet will be the first after demonetisation and traders are expecting a rate cut of at least 25 basis-points in the RBI's two day bi-monthly monetary policy review, supported sentiment at D-street.

Buying momentum was witnessed mainly in the oil & gas and public sector undertaking sector stocks.

The top gainers of the BSE Sensex pack were Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone Ltd. (Rs. 276.25,+1.54%), Housing Development Finance Corporation Ltd. (Rs. 1260.00,+1.30%), Hero MotoCorp Ltd. (Rs. 3237.40,+1.23%), NTPC Ltd. (Rs. 165.00,+0.98%), Bharti Airtel Ltd. (Rs. 331.90,+0.87%), among others.

Major show spoilers were Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Rs. 677.90,-3.98%), Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (Rs. 2171.15,-0.88%), Lupin Ltd. (Rs. 1523.00,-0.33%), ITC Ltd. (Rs. 229.60,-0.28%), Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd. (Rs. 3180.50,-0.27%), among others.

The market breadth, indicating the overall strength of the market, was positive. On BSE, out of the total 2,289 shares traded, 1,381 advanced while 782 shares declined and 126 remained unchanged.

On the global front, Asian markets were trading in the green as investors shrugged-off defeat of Italy’s constitutional referendum and shifted their focus to the upcoming policy meeting of the European Central Bank and also the US monetary policy due in December.