A Fulbright scholar and one-term senator of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (1997-2000), Bhatia is the candidate of the Popular Democratic Party. He contested for mayor in 2000 but lost by a margin of one per cent, or about 3,000 votes.

Jorge Santini, the incumbent from the New Progressive Party, is his main opponent in a race that involves over 250,000 voters.

Puerto Rico is a Caribbean island that was ceded to the US by Spain in 1898. Its citizens got US citizenship in 1917. Today, it is a self-governing commonwealth in association with the United States. The chief of state is the president of the United States, while the head of government is an elected governor.

There are two legislative chambers: the House of Representatives, with 51 seats, and the Senate, with 27. Bhatia's father, Mohinder Bhatia, an economics professor, came to Puerto Rico in 1957. He married Carmen Gautier, a political science professor at the University of Puerto Rico. Bhatia was born in El Salvador and grew up in Puerto Rico. He obtained a BA in government and public policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University in 1986. That same year, he was granted a Fulbright Scholarship to study economic and political development policies and strategies in Santiago, Chile.

In 1990, Bhatia received a law degree from Stanford University. He became a member of the bar in Florida, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico. He also worked as a law clerk to a judge on the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

Bhatia had visited India once, and went to Lucknow and Chandigarh where his uncles live. Bhatia married a Panamanian attorney, Isabel Cristina Fernandez, recently. His brother Andres Bhatia is a practising oncologist in Gainesville, Florida, and his sister Lisa Bhatia is an assistant US attorney at the San Juan district office of the US attorney.