COLLEGE GIRL DIES DURING NDMA MOCK DRILL IN TN

CHENNAI: A mock drill conducted by National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in Coimbatore turned fatal for a 19-year-old college girl Thursday. The deceased was assisted by the NDMA trainer on the second floor of the building of her college, Kovai Kalaimagal College of Arts and Science, and was asked to jump into a net. The victim, identified as N Logeswari, collided into a sunshade and took injury to her head. She was declared brought dead at a nearby hospital, police said. The 25-second video of the incident was doing rounds of social media. According to sources at Alandurai police station, Coimbatore, Logeswari was pursuing her BBA course and was a second-year student at the college in Coimbatore. “National Disaster Management Agency had conducted the mock drill in Logeswari’s college. As part of the drill, the NDMA personnel had asked the boys and girls to jump from the second floor,” police said. A case has been registered against trainer TR Arumugham.

Kumaraswamy increases farm loan waiver package

BENGALURU: Chief minister HD Kumaraswamy on Thursday increased the incentive given to farmers who repaid loans from cooperative banks to ~1 lakh from the ~25,000 that was announced in the Budget on July 5. The incentive is part of the state’s farm loan waiver package, where the state had decided to waive ~34,000 crore worth of farm loans and had provided an incentive for farmers who had repaid or were regular with payments on running loans, which had been estimated to cost about ~7,000 crore. With this, the total size of Congress-janata Dal (Secular) government’s farm loan waiver package has been increased by an estimated ~4,500 crore. However, a government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to address the media, said the final figures would emerge only by July 24.