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Ahead of Tuesday's planned expansion of the Biju Janata Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition ministry in Orissa, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday night asked four ministers of his party to resign.
BJD sources said the ministers have been told that their services would be utilised for party work.
The four ministers are Adwait Prasad Singh (Forest and Environment), Duryodhan Majhi (Minister of State for Information and Public Relations), Debi Prasad Mishra (Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare) and Amar Prasad Satpathy (Minister of State for Agriculture).
Majhi and Mishra confirmed that they had already sent in their resignation letters. "I got a telephone call asking me to resign so that my services could be utilised for party work and I sent in my letter immediately," Majhi said.
Two senior party leaders were sent by the chief minister to the residence of Forest and Environment Minister A P Singh to seek his papers, but they returned as the ailing minister had already retired to bed.
The 25-member ministry, which assumed office in March 2000, had been reduced to 21 after the chief minister dropped three ministers -- two of the BJD and one of the BJP -- and a BJD minister died.
Tomorrow's expansion is the first of the 29-month-old ministry.
The new ministers are likely to be sworn in at 0900 hrs IST.
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