NEW DELHI: The S&P BSE Telecom index was trading 2.37 per cent down at 1,678 around 12:50 pm (IST) on Monday with shares of Idea Cellular (down 5.19 per cent) and Bharti Airtel (down 3.91 per cent) as top drags.

Shares of GTL Infrastructure (down 1.74 per cent), GTL (down 0.80 per cent), Tejas Networks (down 0.60 per cent) and Vindhya Telelinks (down 0.43 per cent) were also trading down around that time.

However, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam (up 2.60 per cent), Himachal Futuristic Communications (up 2.57 per cent), Aksh Optifibre (up 2.37 per cent), ITI (up 2.06 per cent), Sterlite Technologies (up 1.42 per cent), Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) (up 0.57 per cent), Bharti Infratel (up 0.30 per cent), OnMobile Global (up 0.16 per cent) and Tata Communications (up 0.11 per cent) were holding up in the telecom index.

Benchmark BSE Sensex was 202 points up at 34,356, while the NSE Nifty50 index was 59 points up at 10,618.

Among the 50 stocks in the Nifty50 index, 39 were trading in the green, while 11 were in the red.

Sun Pharma was leading the Sensex index, followed by Larsen & Toubro, Coal India and Infosys.

Bharti Airtel, on the other hand, appeared at the bottom in the Sensex index.