Mumbai: Led by HPCL (Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd), PSU stocks suffered a sharp setback in an otherwise mixed pattern of trading at the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), on April 25 due to heavy selling triggered by indication of further delay in disinvestments.

The BSE barometer that extended its losing string to fourth straight session, managed to minimise its losses on the back of impressive gains by IT heavyweights Satyam Computers, Infosys Technologies and HCL Technologies, besides old economy shares like Grasim Ind, MTNL and a few others.

Taking a serious view of reports that the controversial issue of disinvestments in HPCL and BPCL on April 24 rocked the Lok Sabha forcing its abrupt adjournment of a day, investors, particularly domestic financial institutions and operators unloaded shares of PSU counters on fears that the divestment in this sector would be further delayed.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FII) which have been net buyers, albeit in a small quantity, in the past few days, reportedly made fairly good purchases in select IT stocks, mainly in Satyam Computers.

Prominent old economy heavyweight RIL also were at the receiving end as investors lightened their commitment in the scrip, brokers said.

The BSE Benchmark-30 share Index opened marginally down at 2935.08 and later fluctuated in a narrow range between 2937.59 and 2908.29 before ending at 2924.03 as against yesterday's close of 2937.23, netting a fall of 13.20 points.

The broad-based BSE-100 Index fell by another 9.23 points to 1452.40 from previous close of 1461.63.

PTI