BENGALURU, Sept 30 (Reuters) -

Indian shares rose on Friday, led by gains in banks and energy stocks, as investors assessed comments of the country's central bank after it hiked a key policy rate for the fourth straight time, on expected lines, to bring down persistently high inflation.

The NSE Nifty 50 index rose 0.9% to 16,964, as of 0519 GMT, and the S&P BSE Sensex gained 0.95% to 56,935. The indexes had taken a pause ahead of the policy announcement as investors remained circumspect.

The Reserve Bank of India raised the key policy repo rate by 50 basis points–inline with economists expectations–on Friday and said it will stay focussed on withdrawal of monetary accommodation.

The central bank's monetary policy committee (MPC) has hiked the key policy rate by 190 bps since May to 5.9% to cool off domestic retail inflation that has stayed sticky above the RBI's tolerance limit of 6% since January.

"Going forward, the domestic policy may continue to be driven by the global monetary tightening cycle and aggressive stance of (U.S.) Federal Reserve reducing our degrees of freedom," said Garima Kapoor, economist, institutional equities at Elara Capital.

The rate sensitive Nifty bank index rose 1.9%, while the financial index gained 1.6% and the energy index added 1.4%.

Shares of Oil & Natural Gas Corp rose 3.4% and was the top gainer in Nifty 50 index after the RBI said Indian crude oil basket average was projected around $100 a barrel in second half of the year

RBI, which has spent massive amounts of forex reserves to arrest the currency's fall against the strong U.S. dollar, said that the context of adequacy of foreign exchange reserves is always kept in mind while intervening.

The RBI signalled that foreign exchange interventions are likely to continue to defend any extreme volatility in the rupee, said Sakshi Gupta, principal economist at HDFC Bank. (Reporting by Rama Venkat and Nallur Sethuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil and Savio D'Souza)