Bharadwaj contested the parliamentary elections from Jamshedpur and Rajgarh (in Madhya Pradesh) as a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate and was elected to Lok Sabha as a Member of Parliament from Jamshedpur in 1996, by defeating veteran Inder Singh Namdhari. He lost to Laxman Singh (brother of then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Digvijaya Singh) in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections. He also worked in BJP's organisational unit of Madhya Pradesh and was also its Spokesperson for a while, till he voluntarily retired from active politics. Nitish Bharadwaj was born on 2 June 1963 to Janardan C. Upadhye, a Senior Advocate of Bombay High Court and a veteran labour lawyer. He was also a close aide of George Fernandes in the labour movement in the 60s and 70s. Bharadwaj's mother, Sadhana Upadhye, was the Head of the Marathi Literature department of Wilson College, Mumbai. She was an exponent of the Bhagvad Geeta and Dnyaneshwari, the knowledge of which she imparted to Bharadwaj from childhood. In 1991, Bharadwaj married Monisha Patil, daughter of Vimla Patil, then editor of "Femina". They have two children, a son and daughter and divorced in 2005. Monisha now lives in London with their children. Bharadwaj married Smita Gate, an IAS officer (1992 batch) from Madhya Pradesh cadre, in 2009. They have twin daughters.