Oil and gas exploration major Cairn India Ltd made a disappointing debut at the bourses and plunged 14 per cent over its issue price at the close of trading on Tuesday.

The shares of the company closed at Rs 137.50 on the Bombay Stock Exchange and settled at Rs 137.40 on the National Stock Exchange, much lower than its issue price of Rs 160. Earlier, today Cairn got listed with a discount of 12.5 per cent on the BSE and dipped by five per cent over its issue price on NSE.

The scrip touched an intraday high of Rs 155 and a low of Rs 128.68 on the BSE. Even at its intraday high the shares of the company could not touch its issue price. Over 3.26 crore (32.6 millon) shares changed hands on the BSE.

The shares of Cairn witnessed an intraday high of Rs 162 and a low of Rs 128.80 on NSE and over 6.79 crore (67.9 million) shares changed hands during today's trading session. Cairn had entered the bourses with over 176.53 crore (1.765 billion) equity shares of Rs 10 each.

The initial public offer of 32.86 crore (328.6 million) shares of Cairn India closed on December 15, over-subscribed by 1.14 times. However, there were reports about some shareholders withdrawing their bids towards the end of the bidding process as well as after the completion of the IPO book building procedure.

Cairn's Rajasthan oil discovery was the largest find in more than two decades and the company has already done a pre-IPO placement of 20.9 crore (209 million) shares, majority of which, was picked up by Petronas of Malaysia.

Besides the Rajasthan block, Cairn India has 22.5 per cent stake in the offshore Ravva field, which is currently producing around 50,000 barrels of oil per day.