Hyderabad, June 27: The Congress-led coalition in Andhra is once again on a sop spree despite facing a revenue deficit of Rs 1,970 crore and a fiscal deficit of over Rs 7,569 crore this year, says our special correspondent.

Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy today announced loans at 3 per cent interest for women members of Dwacra (Development of Women and Child in Rural Areas) as part of his Rajiv Palle Bata (Taking Rajiv Gandhi’s ideals to village) campaign.

The nearly 500,000 women’s thrift groups already have a corpus of Rs 1,800 crore.

According to a state finance ministry official, the burden of the soft loans on the government would be roughly Rs 125 crore.

Continuing his Rajiv Palle Bata routine of visiting the districts to interact with and understand farmers’ problems, Reddy today toured Warangal.

The other sops he announced during the third edition of Rajiv Palle Bata were:

• Free power for one bulb for poor domestic consumer

• Provision of irrigation facilities to all farmers in the state

Officials said they were yet to assess the total burden of the new sops.