The Union Health Ministry has shifted AIIMS Jodhpur Executive Director Dr Goverdhan Dutt Puri to the ministry in New Delhi with immediate effect, an office order issued on September 27 said. Dr Sanjeev Sinha, Executive Director of AIIMS Jammu, was given additional charge of AIIMS Jodhpur until further orders.

The ministry also ordered a five-member faculty committee to be constituted within five days to support the new charge. The committee will coordinate patient care and student and resident welfare, as well as academic matters.

Resident doctors had launched an indefinite strike on September 24 after first-year anaesthesia resident Dr Raj Naresh Yadav, 31, was found unconscious in a doctors' rest-area washroom on September 22 and declared dead. Police suspect suicide and an institutional inquiry is underway; residents had alleged repeated 36-hour shifts without adequate rest.

The strike, which suspended OT procedures and routine OPD services while emergencies continued, was called off on September 27. Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, who visited the campus on September 26, personally informed the protesters that the government had accepted their demands after discussions with Health Minister J P Nadda.