Water deficit and salt stresses are global issues related to survival of agricultural crops and sustainable food production. Drought stress occur when the available water in soil is reduced and atmospheric condition cause continuous loss of water by transpiration and evaporation. The general complexity of drought is often aggravated under conditions of erratic and unpredictable rainfall and by the occurrence of high temperature, high levels of solar radiation and poor soil characteristics. A key to progress towards breeding for better crop varieties under drought stress is to understand the biochemical, physiological and molecular machinery that are induced under such stress. The present experiment was envisaged study the biochemical changes in selected tolerant and susceptible genotypes to have an understanding of physiological basis of drought tolerance. The drought stress was imposed using a solution of polyethylene glycol (PEG) 6000 creating an osmotic potential of -1.5 MPa. A control set containing distilled water was also prepared for comparison. There was genotypic variation in respect of decrease. On the basis of relative performance of the genotypes under drought stress for seedling characters, four most tolerant (Pusa 1131, Meha, Pusa 9531 and NVL 638) and four most susceptible genotypes (Pusa 1172, IPM 9901-10, IPM 9901-6 and Pusa 1132) were identified. The chlorophyll stability index of the tolerant genotypes showed less reduction under stress.