New Delhi, May 4 (IANS): Better employment opportunities, agriculture loan availability and higher price realisation for farm produce have been the top three priorities of Punjab voters but the state government's performance over these issues has been below average, according to an ADR survey.

The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) said better employment opportunities (51.70 per cent), agriculture loan availability (33.85 per cent) and higher price realisation for farm produce (31.39 per cent) were top three voter priorities in Punjab.

"The state government's performance on voter priorities of better employment opportunities (1.97 on a scale of 5), agriculture loan availability (1.82) and higher price realisation for farm produce (1.85) were below average," the report said.

In rural Punjab, top voter priorities were agriculture loan availability (60 per cent), higher price realisation for farm produce (55 per cent) and subsidy for seeds/fertilisers (49 per cent).

But the government performance on these priorities of agriculture loan availability (1.82 on a scale of 5), higher price realisation for farm produce (1.85) and subsidy for seeds/fertilisers (1.96) was rated below average.

In addition, the government performed poorly on availability of water for agriculture (1.7) and better employment opportunities (1.93) in rural Punjab.

"For urban voters, top priorities were better employment opportunities (57 per cent), better hospitals/primary healthcare centres (49 per cent) and water and air pollution (45 per cent)," the ADR said.

Here also, the government performance on better employment opportunities (2.02), better hospitals/primary healthcare centres (2.00) and water and air pollution (1.82) were below average.

The survey covered around 6,500 respondents across all 13 parliamentary constituencies of Punjab.

The ADR voter survey, perhaps the largest in any country, was conducted between October 2018 and December 2018. It covered 534 Lok Sabha constituencies with 2,73,487 voters participating in the exercise.

The three main objectives of the survey were to identify voter priorities on specific governance issues, voter ratings of the government performance on those issues, and factors affecting voting behaviour.