The NSE benchmark Nifty slipped by 25 points to 10,716.55 on profit-booking mainly in realty, media, pharma, PSU bank, infra and metal sectors as investors turned cautious ahead of upcoming Karnataka assembly polls.
Buying in heavyweights of energy stocks helped the index to cap larger losses.
Overseas, most European shares declined. Asian shares settled higher, tracking Wall Street's advance as oil prices traded higher after touching multi-year highs overnight.
Back home, the 50-share NSE Nifty closed at 10,761.55, down 25.15 points, or 0.23 per cent. The Nifty hit a high of 10,785.55 and a low of 10,705.85 during the day.
It saw an intra-day movement of about 80.55 points.
On the sectoral front, realty fell by 1.97 per cent, pharma 1.83 per cent, media 1.55 per cent, PSU bank 1.20 per cent, metal 0.97 per cent, FMCG 0.72 per cent, auto 0.64 per cent and IT 0.19 per cent. While, energy rose by 0.28 per cent.
Major index gainers were ONGC, Bharti Airtel, TechM, BPCL, Hindalco, Ultratech Cement, Coal India and HindPetro.
Losers included, Dr Reddy, Indiabulls Housing Fin, Tata Motors, Cipla, Bajaj Finserve, Power Grid, Sun Pharma.
The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, remained negative. A total of 450 scrips advanced, 1,342 declined, while 67 remained unchanged.
Turnover in the cash segment fell to Rs 28,773.01 crore, from Rs 28,965.32 crore as on Wednesday.
A total of 14,036.69 lakh shares changed hands in 1,00,46,626 trades. The market capitalisation of listed firms on the NSE stood at Rs 1,47,85,597.85 crore.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)