Three others - Reliance Industries (RIL), a consortium of HPCL-Mittal Energy and BC Jindal Group's Jindal Poly Films - which had submitted expressions of interest have stayed away from placing formal bids for the chemicals company, the people said on condition of anonymity as the information is still private.

With availability of chips improving, passenger vehicles sales peaked at 341,000 units in July 2022. In the current calendar year, this is the fifth month that dispatches from factories have exceeded 300,000 units.

The three main indexes suffered their biggest monthly percentage declines in August since 2015. After hitting a four-month high in mid-August, the S&P 500 has stumbled in recent weeks, dropping more than 8% through Wednesday's close and falling through several closely watched technical support levels.

The greenback hit a 24-year high of 139.59 against the yen in early Asia trade, a gain of about 0.5% on the previous day's close. Expectations for a 75-basis-point U.S. rate hike at next month's Federal Reserve meeting are rising on the back of solid economic data, with Fed funds futures last pointing to a 73% chance of such an increase.

The Fed will need to raise interest rates somewhat above 4% by early next year and then hold them there in order to bring too high inflation back down to the central bank's goal, Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank President Loretta Mester said on Wednesday.

The government has hiked the windfall profit tax on the export of diesel to Rs 13.5 per litre and on jet fuel exports to Rs 9 a litre, besides raising the levy on domestically-produced crude oil in line with the hardening of global prices.