India's two benchmark equity indices, the Sensex of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and Nifty of the National Stock Exchange (NSE), crashed on Sunday afternoon after finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget 2026 in Parliament on Sunday. This is a record ninth consecutive time Sitharaman is presenting the budget.

Finance minister's Budget speech made a key ₹10,000 crore allocation for the biopharma sector, following which, firms such as Max Health and Sun Pharma were among the major gainers on Sunday morning.

However, shares of Coal India, Titan, Tata Steel remained amongst the losers in NSE, as of Sunday noon.

The finance minister also said that the government will focus on helping women move from credit-based livelihoods to becoming owners of their own enterprises as she presented the Union Budget 2026-27 and announced the launch of “She MARTS”, which will operate as retail outlets run by self-help entrepreneurs and owned by the community. The proposal was made due to the success of the Lakhpati Didi programme, she said.

Budget 2026 | Key highlights

-No changes in Income Tax slabs 2026

-New Income tax act will come into effect from April 1, 2026

-Taxpayers with ITR1 and ITR2 to continue to file till Jul 31

-FM proposed to reduce TCS rates for education, medical purposes

-FM proposed to allow duty-free imports of specified inputs

-FM proposed to increase limit for duty-free imports of inputs used for processing sea foods

-FM proposed to exempt duty on 17 medicines

-FM proposed to exempt Minimum Alternate Tax for non-residents

-FM proposed high-powered 'Education to Employment and Enterprise’ standing committee

-FM proposed 7 high-speed rail corridors

-FM proposed to increase public capex to ₹12.2 lakh crores

-FM proposed integrated programme with five sub-parts

-FM Sitharaman proposed to operationalise 20 new national waterways over next 5 years

-FM Sitharaman proposed setting up mega textile parks

-FM Sitharaman proposed to set up ₹10,000 crore to create champion SMEs

-FM proposed Bio Pharma Shakti to develop India as global bio-pharma hub

-FM Sitharaman announced Semiconductor Mission 2.0

Stock market to remain open today

Since the budget is being presented on Sunday, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) announced that equity markets will remain open for trading on Sunday, February 1, though usually weekends are off for both exchanges.

"On account of the presentation of the Union Budget, members are requested to note that Exchange shall be conducting a live trading session on February 01, 2026, as per the standard market timings (9:15 am-3:30 pm)," the NSE said in a circular.

How stock market reacted ahead of Budget 2026

Before the Union Budget 2026 presentation in Parliament, both Sensex and Nifty witnessed a drop in early trade on Friday after a three-day rally. While the 30-share BSE Sensex dropped 619.06 points to 81,947.31 in opening trade, the 50-share NSE Nifty dropped 171.35 points to 25,247.55.