North Block, which houses the Union finance ministry, saw the maximum rejig during the Cabinet reshuffle undertaken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday. The revised portfolio allocation was announced late evening by the government.
While finance minister Arun Jaitley was divested of the information and broadcasting portfolio, his deputy Jayant Sinha was moved to civil aviation. Sinha has been replaced by Santosh Kumar Gangwar, who was earlier minister of state for textiles (independent charge) and Arjun Ram Meghwal, a first-time minister and a former bureaucrat-turned-politician from Bikaner.
Jayant Sinha's exit comes within weeks of Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan's exit (Rexit), who effectively ruled out a second term for himself after his three-year tenure ends this September.
Rajan's decision was conveyed on a Saturday and it was feared that the news of his exit in September would trigger a sell-off on the stock exchanges the next Monday (June 20).
The pessimism, so to speak, was short-lived as the benchmark indices recovered early morning losses and gained to trade higher by 55 points at around 11 a.m. Of course, the announcement of liberal FDI norms later in the day saw the markets gaining 240 points by close. In other words, Rexit had no impact.
Could a similar trend play out on Thursday when the markets open after Wednesday holiday on account of Eid-ul-Fitr? Possibly, yes.
There are no major triggers for the markets this week. The week starting July 11 will be action-packed, with the government releasing inflation and factory output (IIP) data (July 11/12) and information technology (IT) software services exporter Infosys declaring its June quarter results on July 15.
The Sensex ended Tuesday's trade with losses after rallying for six straight days on a slew of global and domestic clues, the most important among them being the acceptance of 7th Central Pay Commission proposals. Global equity markets too gained after witnessing a collapse following Britain's decision to leave the European Union.
However, U.S. stock markets ended lower on Tuesday, snapping the four-day winning streak. On Wednesday, European stocks were down following renewed Brexit fears. These two triggers could dampen sentiments when Indian markets open on Thursday.
