In one of the pages of the Environment Management Plans (EMPs) for the Vizag Mega Data Centre Park in Tarluvada and the Vizag Rambilli Data Centre Park in Anakapalli, water conservation calculations are presented for a shopping mall. In both documents, the solid waste management details are the same as those for a shopping mall. However, neither of these projects is a shopping mall. Whether it was a typographic error or a template submission by Pridhvi Envirotech, a consultant for the Adani Group-owned projects, it fittingly captures Andhra Pradesh’s data centre rush and the shortcuts the State is taking to accomplish its targets.
Ahead of the 2024 Assembly election, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) leader Nara Chandrababu Naidu’s campaign narrative was that Andhra Pradesh’s development was stalled and that industries and investments had pulled out of the State during his predecessor Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s term.
Naidu’s technocrat identity is built on the claim that he brought global technological investments to Hyderabad. When Hyderabad and its tax base went to Telangana after the bifurcation, replicating that became a necessity to strengthen his image. Between 2014 and 2019, the proposed new capital city of Amaravati, on which Naidu staked Andhra Pradesh’s future, could not make much progress, and subsequently, it was abandoned by his successor, Jagan Reddy.
When the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition of the TDP, Pawan Kalyan’s JanaSena Party (JSP), and the BJP came to power in June 2024, the government rolled out sector-specific policies to attract investments, including one focused on data centres.
Over the past two years, AI data centres have emerged as a top priority in Andhra Pradesh. The State becoming home to Google’s largest AI hub outside the US serves as a testament to the government’s investment push. At the April 28 groundbreaking ceremony in Visakhapatnam, Naidu drew parallels between the project and Cyberabad, the planned IT and financial business district in Hyderabad, crediting his son, IT Minister Nara Lokesh, with bringing it to the State. The deal is Lokesh’s most visible claim to fame yet.
The government is betting big on fostering India’s largest AI infrastructure hub within a 100-kilometre radius around Visakhapatnam, with multi-gigawatt projects dotting the coastline. At the end of 2025, India’s total installed data centre capacity was approximately 1.5 GW, and the proposed projects around Visakhapatnam alone would add approximately 3 GW to India’s data centre capacity.
Will the government’s bet prove costly?
Six months after the NDA came to power, the Andhra Pradesh government launched its Data Centre Policy 2024-2029 in November 2024. The target set out in the policy was to enhance the data centre capacity by up to 1 GW. The investing companies had to pitch projects of at least 50 MW capacity and Rs 5,000 crore investment to benefit from the tailor-made incentives. This move eliminated most small players.
Andhra Pradesh has committed Rs.22,000 crore in incentives to the Google-Adani project. Google is to invest $15 billion and provide technology and Adani would build and operate the data centres, while Nxtra Airtel would handle the fibre connectivity and the subsea cable landing station.
This is one of the largest subsidy commitments to a single corporate entity in the past two years. On May 20 this year, the government allocated a similar incentive package of Rs.19,000 crore to Reliance Industries for a giga-scale AI data centre and cable landing station in Vizianagaram.
In 2025, the Adani Group announced plans to increase its stake by investing $100 billion by 2035. The group’s target is to achieve an installed capacity of 5 GW nationwide, of which nearly 2.5 GW will be fulfilled through the Google-Adani project.
The Google-Adani data centre has been popularly discussed as a 1 GW project. Even in several of the executive orders, 1 GW is the projected capacity. But the statutory filings of the Rambilli, Tarluvada, and Adavivaram data centres tell a different story. The capacity of the three Adani-operated data centres in Visakhapatnam is expected to be around 2.5 GW.
Speaking to Frontline, Gutta Rohith of Human Rights Forum (HRF) said: “Since its announcement, people were told it’s a 1 GW data centre, and now clearances have been sanctioned to two data centres, and one more is on the way, all owned by Adani. Yet, no public consultation has been conducted to date.” HRF is a rights group that has been raising questions on the Adani project.
Heavy machinery at work levelling the land at the proposed data centre site in Tarluvada village of Visakhapatnam district, on April 23, 2026.
| Photo Credit:
V. RAJU
Hiding behind Google
The Andhra Pradesh government’s use of the Google brand helped frame the State’s development revival narrative and make a case for the Rs.22,000-crore commitment from a fiscally strained exchequer. But several executive orders issued in the past six months concerning this project have exposed a lack of transparency and public accountability.
The Google-Adani partnership for the AI data centre was announced in October 2025. The incentive package initially detailed Google India’s subsidiary, Raiden Infotech India (Raiden), as the recipient. On December 2, in an executive order, Adani and Airtel were formally acknowledged as Raiden’s notified partners and they, by extension, became eligible for the sanctioned incentives.
In October, the project’s land allocation was set at 480 acres across three locations, but upon Raiden’s request and through a series of executive orders, it was increased to 601.4 acres across three locations. No explanation for this revision is available in publicly accessible information.
The government transferred the land deeds to Adani. A January 12, 2026, government order stated that Adani Infra, the engineering, procurement, and construction arm of the Adani Group, had submitted detailed project reports (DPRs) for all three locations, and that the three special purpose vehicles (SPVs) for the locations would be 100 per cent Adani Infra subsidiaries. Gutta Rohith said: “As the name ‘Adani’ would elicit reprobation and ridicule, the government is hiding behind the Google brand.”
The executive orders document swift and breezy approvals. A February 27 order, in fact, closes with an instruction to all departments concerned to ensure the smooth execution of what it called “the country’s largest-ever single corporate FDI [foreign direct investment] to the State”.
According to an April 17 order, the Adani Group wrote to the Chief Minister seeking a fungibility clause. The government subsequently relaxed the incentive conditions to allow Adani to revise department-wise budgetary drawings, subject to an upper cap of Rs.22,000 crore.
The order also documents other relaxations granted to the Adani SPVs, including no restrictions on floor-to-ceiling height for data centres, exemptions from window requirements, permission to have chillers on rooftops, allowing data centres in any land-use zone, and property tax at residential rates.
On April 18, SPVs owned by Adani Infra received environmental clearances for two data centres at Rambilli and Tarluvada within nine days of the applications; a third one is in the pipeline in Adavivaram.
The December 2 land transfer order had approved the project for a capacity of 1 GW or above. The capacity of the three data centres would be approximately 2.5 GW, more than double the publicly asserted figure.
Gutta Rohith said: “The project has remained a black box since inception. No public consultation has been conducted for projects with grave environmental burdens.”
HRF has been the most vocal critic of the data centre project. The organisation has been documenting the government’s lapses since October. On May 31, following a field visit to Adavivaram, one of the data centre sites, HRF challenged the ongoing activity while permissions are yet to be accorded. Soon afterwards, the Instagram platform restricted two HRF posts related to data centres in the country. HRF also said in a release that the social media platform had censored some 20 short videos of 11 different accounts on this issue.
Environmental concerns
A facility of 2.5 GW in scale, in a foreign jurisdiction, would require months of environmental scrutiny. But in April, the Andhra Pradesh State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (APSEIAA) cleared both applications within nine days of filing.These speedy approvals are where the concerns of local community, activists, and experts about the missing transparency and public accountability become most apparent.
The three sites of the Google-Adani data centres are Tarluvada (Vizag Mega Data Centre Park Ltd), Rambilli (Vizag Rambilli Data Centre Park Ltd), and Adavivaram (Vizag Hyperscale Data Centre project). These are located in an ecologically sensitive terrain. Instead of treating them as a single project, APSEIAA has issued piecemeal clearances, preventing any meaningful assessment of the combined impact of three hyperscale data centres in such close proximity.
Also, Tarluvada is located just 1.53 km away from the Kambalakonda Wildlife Sanctuary, a habitat for Indian leopards. Adavivaram is located near the same sanctuary. The Rambilli site is surrounded by six reserve forests, with the closest one just 1.3 km away. Rambilli is also in close proximity to the INS Varsha nuclear submarine base.
One of the damning aspects of the environmental clearance (EC) is that the statutory filings contradict the conclusions arrived at by the appraisal committee. As per the State Level Expert Appraisal Committee’s (SEAC) minutes, 90 per cent of the Tarluvada site falls within the Pedda Chukka Konda reserve forest area. Yet SEAC sanctioned the EC, stating that the Survey of India topographic sheet did not contain data.
Another contradiction is that the Rambilli EMP claims there are “nil” ecologically sensitive areas, while listing reserve and protected forest areas within 2 km from the site. The authorities who appraised the documents did not flag the discrepancies.
The declared water figures also compound the concern. The Tarluvada data centre declares a requirement of 267 kilolitres per day (KLD), and Rambilli 234 KLD. Neither of the ECs divulge details of the cooling technologies being used, making it harder to project water use. The International Energy Agency benchmark is 2,000 KLD for a 100 MW facility. The declared figures are nowhere close to what the actual usage would be.
Besides, an assessment of the potential air pollution from the 354 backup generators is missing from the documentation.
V.S. Krishna from HRF Andhra Pradesh has approached the National Green Tribunal (NGT) challenging the permits given to the Google-Adani data centres. But the problem goes beyond one data centre facility. There is a regulatory vacuum in both Andhra Pradesh and the country as far as the risks that data centres pose to the environment are concerned.
The EIA Notification of 2006 predates hyperscale AI data centres. Owing to a lack of explicit categorisation of all data centres as category A projects, they can be listed as category B projects, which receive far less scrutiny. Category B is meant for buildings and construction projects, and as long as the built-up area is under 1,50,000 square metres, no public hearing is required.
The Google-Adani data centres were also classified as category B. The built-up area declared in Tarluvada filings was 1,48,922 sq. m, and for Rambilli, it was 1,48,475 sq. m, both just marginally below the threshold that requires public hearings.
The EIA specifies that projects within a 10-km periphery of protected areas need to be treated as category A, but the appraisal authorities do not seem to have considered it.
E.A.S. Sarma, former Secretary to the Government of India, wrote to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), stating: “This project ought to have been submitted to MoEFCC for appraisal as a Category A project.”
“Under political pressure, to facilitate early inauguration, APSEIAA has hurriedly issued environment clearances, erroneously considering them as Category B projects, in violation of MoEFCC’s 2006 EIA guidelines,” he said.
While Andhra Pradesh’s Data Centre Policy 4.0 has a long list of provisions on incentives, power concessions, and other facilitations, it is largely silent on the ecological and local community concerns. Between the policy designed to attract global investment and the law that lacks a specific regulatory framework for data centres, local communities are losing the space to register their dissent.
HRF has demanded the suspension of both clearances and wants reclassification of the project as Category A, with statutory public hearings in all affected villages. It has also demanded that MoEFCC review the classification of data centres under the EIA framework and establish a dedicated regulatory category that reflects their true scale and impact.
Over the past two years, the government’s priorities have remained aligned with those of the big private sector players. Two weeks after the Google-Adani announcement, the government constituted a Data Centre Advisory Council with representatives from Microsoft, NTT, Schneider Electric, Jio Platforms, and Nasscom, among others. Facilitating investments, reviewing data centre policies, and implementing is the stated purpose. The suggestions made by the council, if any, are not placed on public record.
In February this year, the Central government decided to offer a 20-year tax holiday to foreign firms running cloud services from Indian data centres. States have their own policies outbidding each other on the incentivisation front, with Andhra Pradesh having the most aggressive push.
Critics and activists are worried that the tax exemptions, granting of land, discounted tariffs, and infrastructure reimbursements will come at the cost of an indebted State. Alongside the quantum of incentives, they have also raised concerns about the extended duration of the incentives: the power tariff subsidy is valid until 2041 and the water guarantee until 2046. Further, the incentives will possibly outlast government terms, creating an unpredictable ecosystem.
When the NDA coalition came to power in 2024, its leaders spoke about the State’s mounting debts. The total liabilities, including off-Budget borrowings, were estimated at Rs.9.74 lakh crore, according to a white paper released by the government. Now, the government’s justification for the scale of incentives to data centres has primarily been employment generation and economic growth.
The MoUs between the State government and Google-Adani have not been made public. The conditionalities of agreements between Google and Adani are not known either. RTI activist Chakradhar Buddha has filed appeals for disclosure. “Details such as MoUs and DPRs ought to be proactively disclosed under Section 4 of the RTI Act,” he said. The government has not responded.
In the absence of such publicly available information, it is unclear what binding clauses exist upon Google-Adani or other future investors to fulfil the stated objectives, such as job creation, as the executive order details none.
In this image posted on April 28, 2026, IT Minister Nara Lokesh (right) felicitates Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw at the foundation stone laying programme of Google’s AI Data Centre in Visakhapatnam.
| Photo Credit:
PTI
Empty promises of employment
The promise of massive employment generation has been at the heart of Andhra Pradesh’s data centre push. In October 2025, Nara Lokesh announced that the investment would potentially generate 1.88 lakh direct and indirect jobs, along with an economic benefit of Rs.48,000 crore. At the groundbreaking ceremony on April 28 this year, Chief Minister Naidu said the project would trigger reverse migration to Visakhapatnam.
The grandiose numbers do not feature in any executive order, but they have not disappeared from the public sphere. The numbers that appear in the government’s statutory filings are modest. As per documents submitted by the project proponent for environmental clearance, it is estimated that the Rambilli (650) and Tarluvada (575) data centres will have a combined permanent workforce of 1,225. While the construction might generate employment, it is wage work for a fixed period.
Google’s April 28 press release indirectly acknowledges it. As part of the commitments, Google has listed a Skills Trade and Readiness programme for 1,000 local youngsters. It is a training programme in construction, welding, and facility operations, along with an AI Literacy Mission. A training programme, however, is not a guarantee.
Gutta Rohith said: “The 1.88 lakh number is absolute hokum. There is evidence from across the world of how little employment data centres generate. But the Andhra Pradesh government created a number out of thin air and propagated it as absolute truth. Can the government reveal the methodology used to project this number?”
He noted that data centres are being presented as a re-run of the Microsoft Delivery Centre that Naidu brought to Hyderabad in his earlier tenure, but the comparison does not hold.
Hyperscale data centres, once operational, are not known to be labour-intensive facilities. AI data centres, in particular, are known to be capital-intensive yet light on employment. These automated facilities do not require a large staff fleet, unlike the ITeS sector, which triggered a job boom in Hyderabad.
“Governance in Andhra Pradesh has been reduced to empty performativity amplified by pliant media and bankrolled social media,” Rohith said.
Frontline reached out to Nara Lokesh and several officials after the land transfer to Adani was formalised in February. No response has been received on interview requests.
The government has also brushed aside environmental concerns. On June 1 this year, at a conference in Mumbai, Lokesh countered some of the criticisms against data centres, stating: “Approximately 3,000 TMC [thousand million cubic feet] of Godavari water flows into the sea every year, equivalent to Vietnam’s or Brazil’s total water consumption. The planned 6.5 GW of data centres require only 1 TMC of water. A 1 GW thermal power plant uses seven times more water than a 1 GW data centre, yet nobody talks about thermal plants.”
What the government needs to provide is a methodology for arriving at the 1.88 lakh jobs figure, a binding employment commitment, a cumulative environmental assessment for the three sites, a disclosure about water sources, and an account of what the power subsidy will cost ordinary consumers in Andhra Pradesh in the coming years.
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