The benchmarks opened listless and on expected lines as global cues dried up and domestic earnings floundered. The largecap space was pushed down by sell-off in TCS, Coal India, Tata Motors, HDFC Bank, and ITC. HUL, Cipla, BHEL, Sterlite, Mahindra and Mahindra, DLF were lending support to the indices.

At 09.34 hrs IST, the Sensex is up 2.03 points or 0.01% at 19503.11, and the Nifty down 2.50 points or 0.04% at 5895.70. In the midcap Hotel Leela opened with a big gap-up on news that Reliance Industries has bought its IT park building in Chennai. The stock market shot up 9 percent to trade at Rs 26.80. Sugar space too opened strong with Balrampur Chini, Shree Renuka Sugars, Sakthi Sugars etc trading with over 1 percent gains.

Investors cheered  Kingfisher Airlines and United Breweries after the UB management agreed to accommodate further lending to debt-laden KFA by hiking its loan limit from Rs 300 crore to Rs 750 crore. Kingfisher raced up 5 percent and United Breweries moved up nearly 4 percent.

On the various wishlists coming in from various sectors and associations, investors are expected to build-up some stock exchange specific position ahead of the outcome of the Union Budget.

Meanwhile, The euro declined against the dollar on Monday after the European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said economic indicators signaled further weakness in the euro zone.

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Monday his government had nothing to hide in a $750 million deal for AgustaWestland helicopters that the defence ministry is threatening to cancel over allegations of kickbacks.

The scheduled 120-billion-rupee ($2.22 billion) bond auction, which was due to be held on Feb. 22, has been cancelled, the Indian government said in a release on Monday, citing a build-up of its cash balance with the Reserve Bank of India.

India’s central bank will issue final guidelines on new bank licenses before the current fiscal year ends in March, local television news channels reported, quoting Deputy Governor Anand Sinha.  The government may offer additional incentives to exporters in the 2013/14 budget, and the Commerce Ministry has already had talks with the Finance Ministry, said a top government official, who declined to be named.