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Sensex declines on speculative selling

The decision by President K R Narayanan to dissolve the 11th Lok Sabha was expected by the marketmen as prime scrips reacted late in the evening yesterday in kerb deals soon after caretaker Prime Minister I K Gujral's recommendation to the President regarding dissolution of the Lok Sabha.

According to marketmen, the market will take new directions on the announcements of election dates and the future trend would depend on the political stability at the Centre after the election.

The BSE Sensex opened on a weak note at 3530.31, touched the day's high of 3590.00, declined to the day's low of 3503.99 and later closed at 3527.10 points, showing a net loss of 35.27 points over the previous close of 3562.37 points. The broad-based BSE-100 Index drifted lower by 15.15 points to 1528.71 against the previous close of 1543.86 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex Indices were finished at 343.03 and 146.23 points as against the previous close of 346.41 and 146.40 points respectively.

Heavy buying by company circles reported at the Reliance counter while foreign institutional investors made some purchases at select counters, dealers said.

The total turnover on the BSE amounted to Rs 10 billion. Tobacco giant ITC stood first in the list of turnover by registering the highest turnover of Rs 4.6 billion, followed by Reliance Rs 2 billion, SBI Rs 910 million, Tata Tea Rs 630 million and Castrol Rs 382.6 million.

Hectic activity was also observed at the other counters like TELCO Rs 183.3 million, MTNL Rs 155.5 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 132 million, ACC Rs 108.7 million, TISCO Rs 105.5 million, Hind Lever Rs 65.8 million, BHEL Rs 58.4 million, Colgate Rs 40.2 million, Hindalco Rs 32 million and L&T Rs 27.2 million.

UNI