Exact solutions to Einstein–Maxwell systems play an important role in relativistic astrophysics. In this paper, a new technique to generate exact solutions to the Einstein–Maxwell system is proposed. Corresponding to a spherically symmetric charged fluid sphere, by specifying the electric field and for a particular form of the metric potential grr , a new solution is obtained in terms of hypergeometric functions. Subsequently, for specific choice of model parameters, many closed-form solutions are developed. In the process, it is possible to regain a number of well-known stellar models which had been developed earlier with or without the presence of charge following the Vaidya and Tikekar ansatz for compact stars (J. Astrophys. Astron. 3:325 (1982); J. Math. Phys. 31:2454 (1990)).It is shown that the new class of solutions can be used as viable models for compact stars for a wide range of values of the model parameters. Physical behaviour of the resultant stellar configurations are studied.