With the exclusion of Zee Entertainment Enterprises, the benchmark index will longer have any media sector player among its constituents.

SBI Life Insurance Company and Divi’s Laboratories will be entering the 50-stock Nifty from September 25, replacing Bharti Infratel and Zee Entertainment Enterprises, the Index Management Sub-Committee (IMSC) of NSE indices said. With the exclusion of Zee Entertainment Enterprises, the benchmark index will longer have any media sector player among its constituents. On the other hand, the inclusion of SBI Life Insurance will make it the second life insurance company to enter the bourses after HDFC Life Insurance. The move comes on expected lines as part of the semi-annual review of Indices. Along with the changes to the benchmark Nifty 50, revisions have also been made to Nifty Next 50, Nifty 500, among other indices. 

As a part of the semi-annual review, the IMSC has excluded NHPC Ltd, Page Industries, Shriram Transport from the Nifty Next 50, along with the two stocks that were added to the Nifty 50. These will be replaced by Adani Green Energy, Alkem Laboratories, Bharti Infratel, L&T Infotech, and Tata Consumer Products. Nifty 500 will see 17 stocks being rejigged from September 25. Some of the big names that will be excluded include, Hexaware Technologies, Adani Power, and IndoStar Capital Finance. Jubilant Life Sciences will also be excluded on account of the proposed scheme of arrangement. Those being included in the Nifty 500 include Yes Bank, Tata Chemicals, Aarti Drugs, ABB Power Products, Adani Enterprises, Alok Industries, and Chalet Hotels, among others. 

Along with the revision of indices, NSE’s IMSC has also revised the criteria for inclusion or exclusion from the Nifty 500, Nifty 100, and Nifty Midcap 150 indices. For stocks to be eligible for inclusion in the Nifty 500 index, “Companies should rank within top 800 based on both average daily turnover and average daily full market capitalization based on previous six months period data,” NSE said. Additionally the investable weight factor (IWF) of stock should be at least 0.10 (10% free float). Earlier the criteria said that Companies should rank within the top 800 based on both average daily turnover and average daily full market capitalization based on previous six months period data for inclusion in the index. For stocks to be eligible for Nifty 100, they have to be included in Nifty 500 or fit the eligibility criteria.

Earlier this year, ICICI Direct had said that Bharti Infratel and Zee Entertainment Enterprises could be excluded from the benchmark because of their low average free-float market capitalization. So far this year, Nifty 50 has seen the exclusion of troubled private lender Yes Bank and the inclusion of Shree Cements. Additionally, HDFC Life Insurance was included in the benchmark index, replacing Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Ltd, which is undergoing de-listing.