SHILLONG: The ruling NPP and UDP have questioned the findings of a voter survey conducted by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), which reflects poorly on the state government, saying the Opposition Congress could have paid for it.
NPP state president WR Kharlukhi questioned how the report could just blame the incumbent MDA government and not the previous Congress which ruled the state for 8-9 years.
“It may be a ploy of the Congress,” he said while questioning the timing of the report which has been released just a few days before the elections.
“May be the Congress has paid for this survey,” he said.
On the other hand, the vice president of the UDP, another constituent of the MDA government, Allantry Dkhar, said that the timing of the release of the report is unbecoming of the objective of the association which talks about democratic reforms.
He said that when people talk about democratic reforms, they don’t project only negative but even positive things even as he added that the survey was conducted with some vested interest.
“I think three months for a one-year-old government is highly illogical considering the fact that it had started with so many challenges, but now has managed things,” he said.
In Meghalaya, the survey covered 1,000 respondents across the two parliamentary constituencies of Tura and Shillong.
The performance of the state government on the top three priorities of rural voters – agriculture subsidy for seeds/fertilisers (1.40 on a scale of 5), availability of water for agriculture (1.15), and higher price Realisation for farm products (1.18) was rated as below average.
The government also performed poorly in providing electricity for agriculture (1.20) and better law and order/policing (1.94) in urban Meghalaya.
