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Rising level of Cauvery crisis drowns prices, Sensex 3353.30

The fluid political situation over the Cauvery water dispute has further dampened share prices on the Bombay Stock Exchange today due to speculative selling pressure by bull operators.

The domestic institutional investors like Unit Trust of India and Life Insurance Corporation of India made moderate purchases at the fundamentally strong counters. However, their purchases could not bring confidence in the market, leading BSE brokers said.

Pivotal scrips including Telco, Tisco, Reliance, State Bank and Satyam Computers reported further fall today on the selling spree by the institutional investors. The last day of trading settlement on the National Stock Excahnge also aided the downtrend, as major market players were busy in squaring up their positions.

Positive factors like Indian rupee's gain by about 9 paise to Rs 42.40/42 against the US dollar at the interbank foreign exchange market and positive statements made by finance minister Yashwant Sinha in Parliament today could not bring any cheer to the market, brokers said.

Reflecting the bearish phase, the BSE Sensitive Index or Sensex opened at 3385.25, surpassed the important mark of 3400, touched the day's high of 3417.10 points and fell down below the 3400-mark to touch day's low of 3329.84 points before closing at 3353.30, showing a net loss of 31.45 points against the previous close of 3384.75 points.

The Sensex has lost nearly 117 points during the last two trading sessions.

The broad-based BSE-100 Index declined by 12.70 points to 1473.42 points. The BSE-200 and Dollex indices closed lower by 2.73 and 0.95 points to 335.90 and 131.68 points against the previous close of 338.63 and 132.63 points respectively.

Total turnover on the BSE crossed Rs 1,000 mark and stood at Rs 10.73 billion. Out of 7,063 listed scrips, 1315 were traded in the 119,003 trades.

Satyam Computers posted the highest turnover of Rs 2.42 billion, followed by ITC Rs 2.12 billion, Reliance Rs 682.8 million, SBI Rs 566.5 million and Pentafour Rs 442.5 million.

Other actively traded counters were Tata Tea (Rs 437.9 million), Zee Telefilms (Rs 374.6 million), BHEL (Rs 355.5 million), Telco (Rs 287.5 million), Digital Equipment (Rs 207.2 million), Bajaj Auto (Rs 173.5 million), Castrol (Rs 164.7 million), BPL (Rs 126.3 million), HDFC (Rs 120.6 million) and L&T (Rs 120.2 million).

Among the pivotals, cement giant ACC declined by Rs 6.50 to Rs 1367.50, Bajaj Auto by Rs 8.75 to Rs 662.25, Infosys Technology dropped by Rs 32.25 to Rs 2514.25, L&T lost by Rs 3.60 to Rs 222.70, M&M by Rs 3.60 to Rs 194.70, Reliance by Rs 4.20 to Rs 140.10, State Bank by Rs 4.50 to Rs 208.50, Telco by Rs 8.40 to Rs 145.20, Tisco by Rs 2.40 to Rs 123.60.

Among the gainers, Hindustan Lever hardened by Rs 2.50 to Rs 1,684.25 and ITC by Rs 0.75 to Rs 678.25.

UNI