Ahead of cabinet reshuffle Bandaru Dattatreya, 4 other ministers resign

New Delhi: Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya has resigned from the post of Minister of State for Labour and Employment (Independent Charge) ahead of the cabinet reshuffle on Sunday.

The other ministers who have resigned so far include Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti, Minister of State for Skill Development Rajiv Pratap Rudy, HRD Minister of State Mahendra Lal Pandey and MoS for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Sanjiv Baliyan.

Speculation was rife that several others, including Nirmala Sitharaman, Chowdhury Birendra Singh, Faggan Singh Kulaste and Kalraj Mishra, would also go. Civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju and agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh are also to be shifted.

The move comes ahead of the cabinet reshuffle and expansion on Sunday ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Xiamen, China, for the BRICS summit.

It will be the third such exercise since Modi took over as Prime Minister in May 2014.

"A process has been set in motion for the swearing-in ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan around 10 am on Sunday," a government official told PTI.

The newly inducted ministers will be sworn in on the same day, ANI reported.

A reshuffle in the cabinet has been due for months now. Two key ministries opened up after M Venkaiah Naidu was named Vice President. The environment ministry was reassigned to Harsh Vardhan as an additional charge after the death of minister Anil Dave.