The marketmen were worried that the passage of the finance bill would be hampered and the political uncertainty would lead to a slow down in economic recovery. According to a Mumbai-based broker, the bleak signs of the clearance of the finance bill provided the much-needed trigger point for selling pressure.

The crucial voting on the confidence motion moved by Atal Bihari Vajpayee will take place at noon on Saturday and the exchange has kept a trading session on that day for the convenience of investors.

The fluid political scenario has seen the Sensex falling by over 6 per cent since April 12. Interestingly, the 3 per cent fall on on Thursday was accompanied by asimultaneous fall in the turnover on the bourses. The turnover on the Bombay Stock Exchange dipped to a low of Rs 1,227.89 crores on April 15.

Thursday's trading witnessed selling at favourite counters like infotech, pharma and FMCG. ``There is no dearth of contentious issues. Several issues such as what would be the fate of the budget, the FII investments in India, FDI inflows and the currency seems to be the cause of worry,'' said Saumil Trivedi of Dil Vikas Finance. The Skindia GDR index also nosedived by 3.32 per cent to trade at 591.16 points on Thursday afternoon. Despite the simultaneous fall in the GDR prices, GDRs of ITC and VSNL continued to be traded at a premium of over 35 per cent. The ITC GDR was traded at $ 27.5 against its underlying stock which closed at Rs 898.50.

``The 3,380 level is a strong support for the index. If the index finds favourable support at these levels by the weekend, we are set for a turnaround,'' said vice-president of Investsmart, G Vijay Kumar. He further explainedthat from these levels, the index is bound to find a direction.The selling pressure was not confined only to the favourite sectors as among the pivotals, L&T, Hindustan Lever, Bajaj Auto, ITC, ACC, Reliance, SBI and MTNL also dipped by over 3 per cent on an average. Interestingly, Telco recovered by 0.64 per cent to close at Rs 141.50. According to market sources, the recovery at Telco was prompted by fresh purchases by institutional players such as SBI Mutual Fund and UTI.

FIIs, according to market sources, returned to pick up some cyclical stocks like ACC, Hindalco and Tisco. Interestingly, on the BSE's negotiated segment, pharma stocks like Glaxo and Burroughs Wellcome registered huge cross deals reported by leading FII brokerage outfits like James Capel. The fall in the market indices was however contributed largely to the decline in info-tech stocks like NIIT and Aptech. Among the pharma stocks, Novartis, FDC, Smithlike Pharma and Rhone Poulenc hit the lower end of the circuit filter on both the localbourses. However, other pharma representatives like Parke Davis, Boots, Cipla, Glaxo, German Remedies, Dr Reddy's, Ranbaxy and Abott Labs were hammered by over 5 per cent on an average. Most of these sales, according to brokers, came in the form of attempts made by fund managers to book profits.