Santosh Bhartiya is credited for revolutionizing the nature and approach of present day television scenario in India, especially election coverage, by making it people-centric from leader and political party-centric. It was his idea of directly involving the voter and common people, which he implemented during the assembly election of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Delhi & Chattisgarh in the year 2003. This pioneer endeavor of Mr. Bhartiya compelled all the other TV channels to follow suit during the Lok Sabha Election of 2004.
Santosh Bhartiya started his journalistic career from Hindi weekly RAVIVAR, a prestigious & popular publication of Anand Bazar Patrika. Then he became Special Correspondent of RAVIVAR. Santosh Bhartiya is the journalist who did the first ever interview of the bandit queen Phoolan Devi and it was he who wrote about the Phoolan & Vikram Mallah.This is only one example. Mr. Bhartiya is a pioneer journalist in the field of investigative journalism and field reporting. He has broken more than 100 news stories, which finally remained un-contradicted and unchallenged. More than 1000 renowned stories are accounted in the name of Mr. Bhartiya.
After that Mr. Bhartiya shifted as Special Correspondent of THE TELEGRAPH, an esteemed English daily of the same group.
Santosh Bhartiya become one of the first TV journalists of India when he made a furor in electronic media as a Special Correspondent of NEWS LINE, the first news and current affairs programme on DOORDARSHAN.
He became Chief Editor of CHAUTHI DUNIYA the first Sunday newspaper in the history of Hindi journalism, which not only set a milestone in Indian journalism but was also considered as a trendsetter in the feild of Journalism.
CHAUTHI DUNIYA did break the news of “Hshimpura” killings at the banks of ‘Gang-Nahar’ by PAC during the infamous Meerut riots during 1987-88. The story published in CHUTHI DUNIYA was republished in several newspapers & journals around the world. CHAUTHI DUNIYA became the leading light for the humane, secular & logical journalism among the Hindi media. It was the only paper of its kind whose news items were reproduced several times in the English media. May be this training days of the CHAUTHI DUNIYA was the basic reason that many of the leading lights in Electronic and Print media today have their roots from CHAUTHI DUNIYA.
During this period the election for 9th Lok Sabha of Indian Parliament was announced. Santosh Bhartiya was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Farrukhabad Constituency of Uttar Pradesh and became the Member of Indian Parliament. He also became the member of PRESS COUNCIL OF INDIA.
His sojourn with politics was for a short span of time and he again returned back to his old calling journalism. Mr. Bhartiya started a news agency HEADLINE WORLD. This news agency had the membership of all the non-metro newspapers of India.Mr. Bhartiya worked as Consulting Editor of H.I.F.E, the news and feature agency, which represents about 3000 newspapers of the country. Mr. Bhartiya was an advisor of a 24 hrs. Indian News channel.
Santosh Bhartiya had written two books. One on journalism & other is the collection of his comments, which was published in various Newspapers & Magazines. Nowadays Santosh Bhartiya is busy in writing books on Contemporary India Politics.