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Sensex plummets 54.65 points despite Reliance results

Market leader Reliance led the downtrend as the Sensex fell 53.65 points and the Natex by 23.10 points on heavy bull liquidation in the absence of market players such as the foreign institutional investors, on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

Even the half-yearly results declared by the Reliance Industries Limited showing good performance failed to boost the investors sentiment, since the company had not made any provision for direct tax or minimum alternate tax, said a market analyst.

Resuming on a weak note, the BSE Sensitive Index (30 scrips) opened slightly lower at 4061.51, touched the day's high of 4062.81 points, low of 4011.11 points before closing at 4012.40 points, suffering a net loss of 53.65 points as against its previous day's close of 4066.05 points.

The broadbased BSE National Index (100 scrips) closed at 1728.78 points over the last trading day's close of 1751.88 points, losing 23.10 points.

The BSE-200 and Dollex Indices declined by 04.56 and 02.09 points to 385.69 and 177.29 points as compared to Monday's close of 390.25 and 179.38 points respectively.

Another leading broker said that bull operators coupled with common investors are watching the outcome of today's meeting between Prime Minister I K Gujral and industrialists regarding the recession in the country.

While domestic institutions and bull operators continued with short covering from the opening of the market, the FIIs are awaiting the forthcoming credit policy for the busy second half of the current financial year, brokers added. It was also reported that FIIs bought about 500,000 shares of TISCO.

The total turnover was Rs 10.7 billion involving 35.6 million scrips. Out of 6,736 scrips. a total number of 1,825 scrips were traded on the online system.

Reliance led in terms of turnover at Rs 5.1 billion, followed by ITC Rs 1.7 billion, TISCO Rs 680.6 million, SBI Rs 526.6 million, Tata Tea Rs 459 million, ICICI Rs 345.1 million, Castrol India Rs 249.8 million, ACC Rs 247.8 million, Bajaj Auto Rs 172.2 million, Hind Lever Rs 161.5 million, TELCO Rs 84.1 million, Thermax Rs 74.9 million, Colgate Rs 49.1 million, MTNL Rs 42.6 million and L&T Rs 37.2 million in the specified sections.

Good transactions were observed at VSNL, Infosys Tech, Satyam Computer, Software Sol, ICICI Bank, Reliance Petro, Nicholas Pir, Aptech, Ingersoll, Dig Equip, Guj Flouro and Wipro in 'B1' counters.

UNI