Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu and his son – IT minister Nara Lokesh – made a big show of the signing of agreement with Google Cloud in New Delhi on Tuesday for setting up 1 GW data centre at Visakhapatnam.
All the top people of the Google Cloud were present at the MoU signing with the state government, but what the father-son duo conveniently avoided mentioning in the whole episode that the project is a joint venture of Google and Adani Group.
None of the Adani Group team was present at the ceremony and the group issued a separate statement on the establishment of the AI hub in India, which will include the country's largest data centre in Visakhapatnam in partnership with Google.
This was pointed out by YSR Congress party leader and former minister Gudivada Amarnath. He alleged that Naidu was misleading the people of Andhra Pradesh with false propaganda over the so-called Google Data Centre project in Visakhapatnam.
“This project is not a Google investment as projected, but a joint project with Adani Group, whose name has been deliberately hidden by Chandrababu Naidu to avoid public scrutiny,” he said.
He clarified that the foundation for the Adani Data Centre was already laid during Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy’s tenure, when land allocation and permissions were initiated under a transparent employment-linked model.
Amarnath questioned how the state government could justify offering Rs 22,000 crore subsidies while getting only 200 jobs, a fact which was reported even in pro-TDP newspapers.
He said data centres do not generate employment anywhere in the world and even Sify Chairman recently admitted this. In contrast, during YSRCP rule, Adani was asked to build IT Towers and create 25,000 jobs as part of an IT ecosystem model.
“If employment generation was the goal, why didn’t Chandrababu Naidu demand a Google Development Centre instead of silently handing over land, water, electricity and subsidies to corporates?” he asked.
He revealed that the MoU offers alarming benefits to the company – 500 acres of land at 25% rebate, Rs. 2,200 crore capital subsidy, Rs. 1,000 crore annual power subsidy, 15-year electricity duty waiver, 20-year transmission charges waiver – all burdening public resources.
“The data centre will consume 1 million units of power per hour — equal to the entire need of Visakhapatnam city — and 5 TMCs of water from Polavaram, for which there is no clarity,” he said.
He said this is not development. “This is corporate looting sponsored by Chandrababu. Visakhapatnam’s resources are being handed over without jobs, without revenue, without public benefit. The people deserve the truth,” he asserted.