New Delhi, May 23 -- WhatsApp, Instagram and other social media platforms carried political advertisements with misinformation, religious hate speech and incendiary content during the ongoing general election, raising the risk of electoral manipulation by malicious actors, according to a report by a civil rights group.

The report by US-based Eko and India Civil Watch International, released on Tuesday, put the scanner back on political advertising across social media platforms and claims by Big Tech firms to follow policies to detect misinformation.

The two groups claimed to have collated 22 politically incendiary advertisements across Meta's advertising platforms. Of these, 14 passed Meta's quality filters, the bodies claimed. However,...