The Sensex is now quoting at 17,456, up 56 points and the Nifty is at 5,228, up 22 points.

The markets heaved a sigh of relief as the Reserve Bank raised the policy rates in line with expectations. The Sensex is now up 140 points at 17,540 and the Nifty is up 49 points at 5,253, with the interest-rate sensitives leading the way.

The Central Bank hiked the CRR by 25 bps to 6% from 5.75%, reverse repo rate by 25 bps to 3.75% from 3.5% and hiked repo by 25 bps to 5.25% from 5%. Analysts were expecting a 25-50 basis points hike in the short-term and CRR rates.

The realty index has surged 3.4%; DLF, Reliance Infra, Unitech and HDIL have added between 3% and 4% each.

The banking sector is up almost 2%, with SBI, ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank featuring among the key gainers. So is the auto sector, with Tata Motors, Maruti and M&M adding more than 2% each.

And index heavyweight Reliance has moved up 1% to Rs 1,073.

On the losers side, TCS is down 1.6% at Rs 798 and Hero Honda has lost 0.9% at Rs 1879. These two heavyweights had registered gains in early trades on the back of their Q4 results announced after market closing on Monday, and are now seeing some amount of profit-booking.

The BSE market breadth is positive. Out of 2,856 stocks traded on the BSE, there are 2,160 advancing stocks as against 619 declines.