NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: Its time to return home to Aaj Tak for Doordarshan News consulting editor Deepak Chaurasia and the formalities are likely to be completed by tomorrow, if not earlier. 
Chaurasia, in the eye of storm after a new Congress-led government took over in Delhi, allegedly for being a Bharatiya Janata Party loyalist, is slated to join back Aaj Tak as the head of the political bureau, a post that he held before adventuring out to Doordarshan last year.
Indiantelevision.com has it on authoritative sources that the homecoming would mean that some heat would be glanced off Chaurasia, who is currently on leave from DD News.
The current political dispensation and some Indian Information Service officials may not want Chaurasia and few others from Aaj Tak and elsewhere in Doordarshan News, but industry sources indicate that Chaurasia also had offers from NDTV and the Jagaran group, a newspaper powerhouse in North India that is planning a news channel.
Chaurasia had an offer to join as a senior editor doing special stories/projects for NDTV India, the Hindi news channel from the NDTV stable, which, at present, is snapping at the heels of market leader Aaj Tak. The proposal fell through because Chaurasia wanted the political beat, for which NDTV was not ready to oblige him.
However, according to a former colleague of Chaurasia, “Deepak should have taken up the NDTV offer as that organization would have given him the chance of a life time to shake off perceptions of his being a BJP man.”
With Chaurasias return to Aaj Tak almost finalized — unless some last minute hitch contributes to a twist in the tale — the curtains have come down on almost two months of speculation on the fate of some people who had left organizations like Aaj Tak to join the relaunched DD News last year.
Still, the future destination of some others, like Sanjiv Paliwal and Rajnish Ahuja, who had joined DD News after Chaurasia went there, is not known, though Paliwal is understood to have officially put in his papers at DD.
In recent times, Aaj Tak has been trying to get back some old hands as people continue to leave the organization and sister concern, Headlines Today. Apart from Milind Khandekar, who quit as executive producer (western region) over the last 10 days to join Star News, reports indicate that some other causalities too have happened in TV Today Network and this time one from Headlines Today too. The likely destination: Star News.