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Downtrend continues, Sensex closes at 3180.73

Downtrend continued on the Bombay Stock Exchange on the third consecutive day as share prices declined further due to selling pressure from foreign institutional investors and speculators, pushing down the BSE Sensex below 3200 mark to close at 3180.73 points today.

There was no big activity in the market and the major counters witnessed selling pressure by FIIs, leading BSE brokers said. Political uncertainty at the Centre and the delay in the appointment of Unit Trust of India's chief affected the market sentiment at the BSE, they added. Market had already reacted negatively to the departure of GP Gupta from UTI, who took over as the chairman and managing director of Industrial Development Bank of India yesterday.

Reflecting the downtrend, the 30-share BSE Sensex opened at 3219.98 points, touched the day's high of 3229.95 points, fell below the psychological barrier of 3200 to touch the day's low of 3172.39 points and finally ended at 3180.73 points, showing a net loss of 49.87 points over the previous close of 3230.60 points.

The Sensex has lost the gain which it reported on the first day of current settlement during the last three consecutive trading sessions by loosing nearly 108 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 index declined by 22.45 points to 1393.74 points against the previous close of 1416.19 points. The BSE-200 and Dollex indices closed lower by 3.50 and 2.13 points to 317.36 and 124.73 points against the previous close of 322.23 and 126.86 points respectively.

The Hindustan Lever scrip which was in the limelight yesterday fell sharply by Rs 70.25 to Rs 1525.25. Barring tobacco giant ITC, none of the scrips reported remarkable gains.

ITC closed higher by Rs 1.75 to Rs 634.50. ACC dropped by Rs 13.50 to Rs 1203, Bajaj Auto lost Rs 10.75 to Rs 553.75, L&T declined by Rs 5.40 to Rs 218, Mahindra and Mahindra down by Rs 0.20 to Rs 211.30, State Bank of India eased by Rs 0.30 to Rs 205.70, Telco drifted lower by Rs 5 to Rs 158.20 and Tisco eased by Rs 0.50 to Rs 122.90.

Total turnover on the BSE reduced to Rs 5.52 billion from yesterday's turnover of Rs 7.65 billion.

ITC registered highest turnover of Rs 1.17 billion, followed by Satyam Computers (Rs 1.12 billion), Hindustan Lever (Rs 496 million), Reliance (Rs 469 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 408.5 million), Pentafour Software (Rs 293 million), Castrol (Rs 219.6 million), State Bank of India (Rs 168 million), Tata Tea (Rs 105.9 million), Telco (Rs 71.9 million), L&T (Rs 54.3 million), ACC (Rs 54.2 million), Infosys Tech (Rs 47.3 million), Raymonds (Rs 39.8 million) and Bajaj Auto (Rs 37.4 million). UNI

UNI