Mumbai, Dec 2 (IANS): Both the Sensex and Nifty on Monday opened slightly higher led by heavyweight like Reliance Industries (RIL), Bharti Airtel following tariff-hike announcement of up to 40 per cent on Sunday by the telecom companies.

The biggest index contributor RIL, jumped over 3 per cent on the Nifty and Bharti Airtel as much as 8 per cent, but overall 34 scrips Nifty50 stocks traded in the red while only 16 advanced during the early trade.

The benchmark Sensex opened nearly 280 points higher. At 9.17 a.m., it was trading 85.23 points higher at 40,879.04. The Nifty50 was also up 30.30 trading at 12,086.35.

Deepak Jasani of HDFC Securities told IANS that the GDP growth figures were more-or-less on expected lines.

National Statistical Office (NSO) data, released last week, showed that India's GDP growth slipped to a six year low of 4.5 per cent owing to sharp decline in manufacturing activity, which contracted by one per cent.

R. Nagaraj of Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research Mumbai, on the markets scaling new highs despite slowing growth in the economy, said: "The stock market is largely driven by short term capital flows. Hence stock price movements are mostly a sideshow, not a barometer of the real economy."