Both Selangor Mentri Besar Abdul Khalid Ibrahim and SelangorKini have today denied that state media were being used to favour his campaign for the deputy president post.

"No, I did not use," Khalid commented briefly this afternoon at the Selangor state office in Shah Alam in response to PKR Youth's claim that he had wavered SelangorKini 's independence.

SelangorKini 's editor Fazallah Pit also issued a statement today saying that it published the article headlined "PKR elections 2014: Why Tan Sri Khalid deserves to be promoted as deputy president" because it was of news interest.

"The article was written on the editorial board's decision, not from pointers by any particular party who supported Abdul Khalid," he said.

Yesterday, PKR Youth's secretary Saifuddin Shafi Muhammad had criticised SelangorKini for succumbing to political manipulation for the article which allegedly favoured Khalid.

Saifuddin said that using SelangorKini in this way marred Khalid's own pledge for a transparent government and made PKR no different from BN.

The controversial article had appeared in SelangorKini 's April 12 issue and was also uploaded on its related Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Besides Khalid, PKR secretary general Saifuddin Nasution Ismail and Hulu Selangor division chief K Ramachandran were also competing against incumbent Azmin Ali for the party's second highest position.

PKR elections will be held from April 26 to May 12.