The S&P BSE Sensex and NSE Nifty 50 indexes staged a sharp recovery from intraday low levels in afternoon deals led by gains in bluechip shares like HDFC Bank, HDFC, ITC, ICICI Bank, Hindustan Unilever and Sun Pharma. The Sensex recovered as much as 489 points from day's lowest level and the NSE Nifty 50 index moved above important psychological level of 10,950.

As of 2:11 pm, the Sensex rose 0.3 per cent or 124 points to 37,193 and the NSE Nifty 50 index advanced 0.25 per cent or 27 points to 10,975.

Nine of 11 sector gauges compiled by National Stock Exchange were trading higher led by the Nifty FMCG index's 1.4 per cent gain. Nifty Pharma, Metal, Private Bank, Realty and Banking sector gauges also rose between 0.4 and 1.2 per cent each.

Mid- and small-cap shares were witnessing buying interest as the Nifty Midcap 100 index rose 0.3 per cent and Nifty Smallcap 100 index advanced 0.7 per cent.

Sun Pharma was top gainer in the Nifty 50 basket of shares, the stock rose 3 per cent to Rs 448. Vedanta, Tata Steel, Zee Entertainment, ITC, Hindustan Unilever, Hindalco, HDFC and Wipro were also among the gainers.

On the flipside, Bharti Infratel, Power Grid, Coal India, NTPC, ONGC, Eicher Motors and Indian Oil were among the laggards.