About Rajat Sharma
Rajat Sharma: Born: 18 February 1957 (age 60), Delhi
He was born in SabziMandi, Delhi in 1957. While he was a junior student at the college in 1974, he joined the JP Movement. I was strongly inclined towards debating. His oratory skills came very handy once when I doubled up as the warm-up speaker for Jayaprakash Narayan or JP, as he was fondly called then, during one of his memorable meetings at Maurice Nagar Chowk near Delhi University. In 1975, as the Internal Emergency was declared by the then Prime Minister Smt. Indira Gandhi, he spent 11 months in Tihar Jail. In 1982 I started my journalism career with Onlooker as a Trainee Reporter.He wrote my first story for the Onlooker, a fortnightly magazine and was paid Rs300 for it.
He got promoted as a Chief of Bureau in 1984 and as an Editor in 1985. After serving there for two years, I started working as an Editor at Sunday Observer, in 1987. He worked as an Editor of The Daily from 1989 till 1992. It was a casual conversation with Subhash Chandra, Chairman of Zee Network, and Gulshan Grover, in 1992, when the idea of an interview in the format of an “adalat” was mooted. Next year In February 1993, the first episode for Aap Ki Adalat was shot with Lalu Prasad Yadav. And, on March 14, 1993, the first episode was aired. The second episode was with Khushwant Singh. This was followed by T N Seshan and Kapil Dev.
He launched India’s first private television news bulletin in 1995, And 2 years later, he and his wife Ritu decided to set up our own production house – Independent News Service (INS). In fact, this is the parent company which owns India TV. India TV News channel was launched in 2004. TarunTejpal, Maneka Gandhi, and MadhuKishwar were roped in. He received a lot of accolades for the serious content of the channel.
It was in 2008, After a lot of struggle, his company achieved a whopping 120% revenue growth. In fact, our catchy and screeching headlines soon caught the attention of others and even English channels. They shifted to our their office at Noida Expressway in 2010. In 2013, He and his colleagues revamped their channel’s logo and the overall look and feel.
He had an iconic Interview with Mr.NarendraModi just before the General elections in 2014. And this episode broke all TRP rating records of TV news viewership. 74 percent Hindi news television viewers in India watched this interview. This was totally unprecedented!
The same year in 2014, On 2nd Dec, we celebrated 21 glorious years of AapkiAdalat. It was a grand event graced by the President, Prime Minister, the 3 Khans of Bollywood – SRK, Aamir, and Salman apart from other senior leaders from the political spectrum, top industry voices, and eminent social activists.
He was conferred the Padmabhushan Award in 2015 by the Government of India.
Rajat Sharma is the chairman and editor in chief of an Indian Hindi news channel, India TV. He is one of India’s most prominent journalists.
- Movies and TV shows: Aaj Ki Baat, Aapkiadalat, Kurukshetra
- Education: Shri Ram College of Commerce (1974–1980), Ramjas School, Pusa Road
- Awards: Padma Bhushan, ITA Award for Best Anchor – News/Current Affairs show