This reshuffle comes in the wake of the faculty strike in the AIIMS and follows the return of Union Health Minister Dalit Ezhimalai from the Hague on Thursday.

The Health Minister in a statement released to the press on Friday said that the Government was ready for negotiations with the doctors and appealed them to end the strike. He, however, said that the Bakshi committee recommendations which are being demanded by the faculty could not be implemented as they are. ``They are recommendations and not an award like the Pay Commission and what was acceptable in it to the government has already been notified,'' he said. On the transfer of Shailaja Chandra to NACO, Y.N. Chaturvedy, who is carrying out the functions of Health Secretary in the absence of K.K.Bakshi, said that the move had nothing to do with the AIIMS strike. ``These are things that keep happening in the bureaucracy,'' he said.

Chandra refused to comment on the subject. The additional secretary had been viewed among faculty members as someone who was opposed to implementation of the Bakshi Committee recommendations for pay scales.

Ezhimalai said that the Prime Minister is personally monitoring the progress of the deliberations of the Group of Ministers on this issue.