Shillong, Apr 4: The United Democratic Party (UDP) an ally of the ruling NPP in the Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) government slammed the report released by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) which rated the performance of the present government as “poor” and alleged that the ADR was working like a “marketing company” that comes up with a data analysis just to promote one thing or the other.

Speaking to reporters, UDP vice president, Allantry Franklin Dkhar said that the timing of the release of the report was highly questionable.

The ADR in its report has rated the performance of the MDA government as “poor”. The ADR’s Meghalaya Survey Report 2018 was released on Wednesday. The report stated that the voters’ priorities in Meghalaya have been neglected by the government in power.

The survey was conducted between October and December of last year, prior to the general elections to the Lok Sabha 2019.

“This is quite clear from the fact that the government has performed poorly, and underwhelming on all top ten governance issues as rated by the voters,” the report stated.

Dkhar however said that the MDA has completed just one year in office, and it was so easy to point finger at the government that has just begun to sense the direction that the state should follow.

“I would say that had I known by which standard the ADR has applied to sum up that the present government has performed poorly, then may be there would be some scope of agreement. But at this juncture, I would discount this report. If the ADR is really committed towards propagating democratic reforms, it should also understand that the MDA government has just completed a year. It is highly unbecoming of an association to talk about democratic reforms but did not provide opportunity for a government to not complete its full term and then make assessment of its performance,” he said.

Dkhar said that the government was facing lots of challenges as there was a lot of backlog left by the previous Congress government that fell upon the new government.

“We have to carry a task in the midst of a lot of disturbances. The moment we started, we had a law and order situation that affected the entire city. That took some part of our time that would have actually been gone into delivering governance. We had to focus on the law and order and everyone has commented us which I do not need to blow our own trumpet. Not a single soul was lost, and the sad part was that, police had to bear the brunt of it, and we are very grateful to the department that stood by the decision of the government to not go overboard and harm those protesters at that point of time,” Dkhar said.

Dkhar also said that the way the ADR was presenting its report was like trying to market something especially in the run up to election.

“In all likelihood, the report was just to please whoever they took this road of presenting the survey report, which is highly questionable,” he said.

Dkhar also did not agree that the report would impact the performance of the MDA in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Shillong and Tura Lok Sabha constituencies.

“The people of Meghalaya are resilient enough to know of an association that comes up with a report. This report could have come out after one and a half or two years. Why now in the run up to the elections,” Dkhar asked.

The elections to the two Lok Sabha constituencies will be held on April 11.