Five days before announcing the scheduled fourth quarter results of fiscal 2016-17, India’s leading Technology giant Wipro Limited has officially engaged in an employee layoff. The IT company, on Thursday, made a reduction of 600 under-performing employees, also giving strength to the growing rumor that there could as many as 2000 more job cuts.

With more than 1.79 lakh employees, the Bengaluru based Wipro is regarded as third largest IT company in India. ‘These job cuts are taken up as part of rigorous performance appraisal process’, said the company’s senior manager who doesn’t want his name to be disclosed. He further adds that annual performance appraisal process will also include mentoring, re-training and up-skilling of staff, besides lay offs.

The unexpected reduction call by Wipro comes at the time when Indian IT industry is extremely worried about US President Donald Trump’s new executive order for tightening the existing H1-B regulations.

Given the unwavering state of Information Technology after Trump assuming office, similar job-cuts are expected to extend across IT industry. And, in the last quarter, American  MNC Cognizant also threatened to axe 2 to 3% of its employees as part of regular appraisal cycle.