(Bloomberg) -- Indian equities rose, led by auto stocks, as investors tuned in for the government’s last federal budget before the national ballot likely in April-May.

The S&P BSE Sensex advanced 0.4 percent to 36,405.55 as of 11:10 a.m. in Mumbai as Finance Minister Piyush Goyal presented the budget in the lower house of the Parliament. The index on Thursday had clocked its sharpest gains in three months, wiping out January’s losses to add 0.5 percent in the month. The NSE Nifty 50 Index also gained 0.4 percent.

Follow the TOPLive blog of the budget speech here.

The Numbers

• Fifteen of 19 sector sub-indexes compiled by BSE Ltd. advanced, led by a gauge of auto companies.
• Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. and Hero MotoCorp Ltd. gave the biggest boosts to the benchmark index.
• Vedanta Ltd. tumbled as much as 19.9% on outlook and downgrades by CLSA and Goldman Sachs.
• Bank of Maharashtra surged as much as 16.4%, while Oriental Bank of Commerce and Bank of India Ltd. each climbed as much as 4% after exiting RBI corrective action.

Strategist View

• “The government may propose a direct tax change which can encourage the professionals to vote for them. However, for farmers, it will have to provide more than an interest subvention to deal with agrarian stress,” said Sameer Kalra, president research at Target Investing in Mumbai.
• “As the election commission is expected to announce dates in the first week of March, the government has the whole month to announce more social initiatives outside the budget,” he said.

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