TX Student Vasant Bhatt Says Conservative Outlet Fired Him After He Voted Democrat

HOUSTON, TX – A 21-year-old In student journalist in Texas says conservative higher-education outlet Campus Reform has ended his role as a correspondent after he publicly disclosed voting for a Democrat to protest anti-Indian bigotry.

Vasant Bhatt, a political science student at the University of Houston, announced the termination in a post.

“I exercised my constitutional right to vote according to my conscience, spoke out against anti-Indian bigotry, and refused to toe the Republican Party line. My participation in Campus Reform’s correspondent program has now been terminated,” Bhatt wrote.

“Losing a place in a program will not make me retract my beliefs or abandon my community,” he added.

Campus Reform has not publicly commented on Bhatt’s claim. His profile page, which described him as a “Senior Correspondent”, no longer appears among the site’s author listings, although the removal does not independently establish why his role ended.

Bhatt drew attention earlier this month when he said he had voted for Democrat James Talarico over Republican Ken Paxton in the Texas US Senate race, citing his opposition to xenophobia and attacks on Indian Americans’ identity.

His Campus Reform biography said he had previously interned with Senator Ted Cruz’s re-election campaign and worked with the Texas Youth Summit, which the outlet described as one of the state’s largest gatherings of young conservatives.

Campus Reform is a project of the Leadership Institute, a conservative non-profit organization based in Virginia that trains young activists.(IANS)