Election opinion polls conducted by media should be properly authenticated, former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said Wednesday.

A day after a Hindi television news channel carried out a sting operation that indicated a political conspiracy to manipulate public opinion, Kejriwal said the sting operation aired by the channel, if assumed to be authentic, represents a dark hour for the Indian media.

“It shows that political parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party have been buying favourable service to manipulate public opinion,” the Aam Aadmi Party leader said.

He also demanded that the News Broadcaster Standard Authority (NBSA) and the Editors Guild should have checked the veracity of the sting operation and conducted an inquiry into the role of news channels in broadcasting manipulated polls.