Mumbai: Notwithstanding a smart pullback from lows of 5506.00, the Sensex remained in a vice-like grip of bears and ended at a one-month low of 5584.99 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) today (May 3, 2004), pulled down by sustained selling due to prevailing political uncertainties governing the market.

Most of the public sector undertakings (PSUs) and bank shares met with heavy selling following fears of a hung Parliament which could slow down the disinvestment process, dealers said.

Selling was not confined to any partcular sector, as most of the segments bore the brunt of investors' wrath, they added.

The Sensex had last closed at 5590.60 on March 31.

The BSE-30 share Sensitive Index opened slightly lower at 5645.86 as against last Friday's close of 5655.09, which was also the day's high, and dipped to a low of 5506.00.

However, select top heavyweighted counters found some low-level buying by local funds during the fag-end which helped the Sensex to recover from the day's low to close at 5584.99, still showing a net fall of 1.24 per cent. The broad-based BSE-100 also dropped by 44.37 points to 2980.77.

Shares like, SBI, Tisco, Tata Motors, BHEL, Grasim, Hindalco, HPCL, Satyam Computer, L&T, ONGC and Ranbaxy suffered a sharp setback while top heavyweights like RIL, HLL and Infosys Tech attracted renewed buying, cushioning the sensex fall to some extent.

Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs), who turned net sellers last week, also affected the market sentiment.