Reflecting the nervous selling at the counters of Reliance, MTNL, SBI and ITC, the Sensex closed at 2,872.48 points as against last closing of 2916.66 points. The Sensex opened fractionally down at 2914.50 and gradually dropped to the intra-day low of 2850.50. The BSE-100 index also eased by 17.62 points to 1283.43 from previous close of 1301.05.

Local institutions on both NSE and BSE, were reportedly net buyers. On the BSE, domestic institutions made a net purchase of Rs 18 crore, while on the NSE they bought stocks worth Rs 10 crore. Interestingly, while the FIIs sold heavily on the NSE, they were net sellers to the tune ofRs 14 crore on the BSE. On the NSE, FIIs sold a huge chunk of stocks worth Rs 45 crore.

The imbalanced sales strategy, according to market participants, was on account of the systems failure on the BSE. The BSE started its BOLT operations only at 11.45 am, as against its scheduled time of 10 am.

"Most of the sales had to be routed on to the NSE as the BSE was closed till 11.45 on account of the systems failure," explained a dealer with an FII brokerage outfit, in the light of the pending orders which needed to be executed before the opening of the GDR markets.

Even announcement of excellent working results by some software companies failed to inject any interest in operators. On the equity prices declined sharply led by Satyam Computers on heavy offloading by the FIIs but the fall was cushioned by purchases from domestic funds and institutions. The S&P CNX Nifty closed at 835.80, showing a fall of 13.30 from the previous close of 849.10.

The total business volume was Rs 1,734.32 crore from 574.68lakh shares and in 1,89,933 trades. Debentures traded volume was Rs 79.21 lakh.

The exchange witnessed 214 shares advance, 735 shares decline and 75 shares remain unchanged.