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Sensex drops by 36.41 points

Foreign institutional investors made two-way transactions as they sold considerable amount of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited shares and bought a sizeable number of ITC shares, leading brokers said.

Reflecting the downtrend, the BSE Sensitive index (30 scrips) opened higher on overnight buying support at 3459.82 points, could not sustain the level and drifted lower to 3403.49 points, and finally closed at 3413.36 points, suffering a loss of 36.41 points as against the previous close of 3449.77 points.

Being the last day of settlement at the National Stock Exchange, domestic institutions including the Unit Trust of India, Life Insurance Corporation of India, and bull operators were busy squaring their positions, which also aided the downtrend in the BSE, brokers added.

LIC, GIC, and UTI sold good amount of Hindustan Lever, ITC and ACC shares.

The BSE National (100) index declined by 14.03 points to 1469.12 points over the last working day's close of 1483.15 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex indices settled down at 325.40 and 139.34 points as compared to yesterday's close of 328.70 and 140.93 points, decreasing by 03.30 and 01.59 points respectively.

The total turnover was Rs 10.5 billion, involving 34.7 million shares.

ITC registered highest turnover of Rs 3.3 billion followed by Hind Lever Rs 1.7 billion, Castrol Ind Rs 1 billion, Tata Tea Rs 1 billion, Reliance Rs 476.8 million, MTNL Rs 386.6 million, SBI Rs 314.6 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 218.2 million, TELCO Rs 180.5 million and TISCO Rs 77.6 million in the specified counters.

Among the other scrips were LML (Rs 72.8 million), Corporation Bank (Rs 58.8 million), Elgi Equip (Rs 19.8 million), Indo Rama Syn (Rs 15.6 million), Essel Packin (Rs 14.4 million), HDFC Bank (Rs 14.2 million) at 'B1' counters.

MTNL gained by Rs 10.70 to Rs 225.10, Guj Amb Cement increased by Rs 8.10 to Rs 252.10, ITC by Rs 4.25 to Rs 622.50, Lakme by Rs 9 to Rs 204.30, BSES by Rs 2.20 to Rs 180, and Tata Steel by Rs 1.8 to Rs 123.20.

Among the losers were ACC by Rs 20.75 to Rs 1238.50, Bajaj Auto by Rs 4.75 to Rs 523, Hind Lever by Rs 24 to Rs 1540.25, Hindalco by Rs 10.25 to Rs 620.50, Arvind Mills by Rs 1.8 to Rs 54.35 and Reliance by Rs 1.7 to Rs 151.10.

UNI