Sputnik News
https://sputniknews.com/military/201706051054328885-india--tech-rocket/
Indian space scientists have been looking for cryogenic rocket technology since the mid-1980s. The hope of getting it via USSR buckled in 1991 with the disintegration of Soviet Union. Before 1991, the USSR didn't pass it on as part of MTCR and other Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) detente with the United States. There were multiple treaties which stopped the transfer of technology to countries that were not signatories to Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The US imposed sanctions on India first in 1974, when the first nuclear test was carried out. In 1998, India tested nuclear devices for the second time, leading to more sanctions and therefore the denial of cryogenic engine technology.
The project may have been started in the 2000s but it's the lack of engine technology which has held back such projects.
"Export controls on strategic technologies were used to prevent India from developing missile or nuclear technology. Since the early 2000s, the rationale of technology export control regimes and its dynamics have undergone some change. Despite technology controls, the West, and the US, in particular, had to recognize the new reality, that they could not entirely control the spread of technology," Rajeshwari Rajagopalan Pillai, Senior fellow and Head, Nuclear & Space Policy Initiative, at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, told Sputnik.
Capable of carrying a payload of 4,000 kg into the geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) at 36,000 km, and 10,000 kg into the lower earth orbit (LEO) at around 800 km, the GSLV Mark III's first successful suborbital test flight was conducted on December 18, 2014, according to the
official website of ISRO.