Mumbai: Share prices suffered a sharp setback on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) during the week under review on heavy sell-off due to concerns over the exit polls' adverse projections for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government in second phase of elections, sending the Sensex down by a whopping 270.49 points, worst weekly fall in last 31 months.

After gaining by over 482 points in last five weeks, the benchmark suffered a sharp setback following indications of hung parliament after second round of elections on Monday (Apr 26, 2004), resulting the index to register its biggest one-day fall in 36 months on Tuesday when it nose dived by nearly 213 points.

Particularly, public sector undertakings (PSUs) counters were at the receiving end on fears of slow-down in ongoing disinvestment process.

The BSE-30 share sensitive index opened with a wide downside gap of 57 points at 5,868.33 as against last weekend's close of 5,925.58 and dipped further to a low of 5,626.42 before ending the week at 5,655.09, a steep fall of 4.56 per cent.

Operators and retail investors were heavy sellers right from the beginning of the week as they preferred to unwind their positions in reaction to the prediction of a hung House and also profit-booking in the Futures and Options at the concluding session of April contract on Thursday (Apr 29, 2004).

Even the better-than-expected working results by the petro major Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) on Thursday was sidelined. RIL has become the first private sector Indian company to cross over $ one billion milestone in net profit by posting a 29 per cent surge in its 2003-04 consolidated net profit at $ 1.18 billion (Rs 5,169 crore).

During the week, 26 out of 30 index-based shares mainly RIL, Infosys Tech, HLL, SBI, Tata Motors, Tisco, ONGC, HPCL, HDFC, BHEL, L&T, MTNL and Dr Reddy bore the brunt of heavy selling, resulting in heavy fall in Sensex.

After remaining net buyers in past several weeks, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) also joined the selling bandwagon and liquidated shares worth Rs 274 crore on first three sessions.

Majority of banking counters were also among the top losers as a result of heavy selling triggered by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines on dividend payout.

Tightening the norms for payment of dividends by banks, the Reserve Bank of India last weekend placed a cap of 33.33 per cent on dividend payout.

The revised guidelines, which would be applicable from year ending March 2004, makes eligible only those banks with capital adequacy ratio (CAR) of at least 11 per cent and net non-performing assets below three per cent to declare dividends without prior approval of the apex bank.

Depicting the downslide in PSUs and banking segment, the BSE-PSU index tumbled by 273.27 points or 6.31 per cent to end the week at 4057.97 from preceding weekend's close of 4331.24 and the banked dipped by 108.16 points or 3.28 per cent to 3188.07 from 3296.23.