Mumbai, Sep 22
The Indian benchmark indices opened marginally lower on Monday, despite positive global cues, with IT stocks leading losses owing to some concerns over the new US H-1B visa rules.
As of 9.26 am, the Sensex was down 189 points, or 0.23 per cent at 82,772 and the Nifty was down 40 points, or 0.16 per cent at 25,286. Sensex and Nifty had opened with dips of 0.40 per cent and 0.33 per cent respectively, but later cut down on the losses.
IT giants such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies, Tech Mahindra, and Coforge slipped in the morning trade.
The US government has clarified that visa holders returning to the country are exempt from the new $100,000 fee, which provided marginal relief to Indian IT companies.
White House said the visa fee would be a one-time payment, applicable only to new applications from the next lottery cycle (March–April 2026), and not on renewals.
The broad cap indices Nifty Midcap 100 dipped 0.05 per cent, and the Nifty Smallcap 100 lost 0.12 per cent.
The losers were Tech Mahindra, TCS, Tata Motors, Apollo Hospitals and Dr Reddy's Labs.