The Uttar Pradesh government is eyeing a major pie of the projected 5-billion dollar investment in domestic data centres till March 2025, and is hammering out a policy to woo private investors in the sector.
While the state has already received investment proposals of about Rs 10,000 crore in data centre projects by big companies — Adani, Hiranandani, RackBank — the government wants to further sweeten the investment climate with an exclusive policy framework to cater to the needs of the sector.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has instructed the officials to draft an investor-friendly data centre policy to attract private investors and to usher in the state on the path of digital economy. Underlining that the data centres played a major role in the development of the information technology (IT) sector and creation of a large number of direct and indirect jobs, the chief minister said the new policy should be prepared after holding discussions with all the stakeholders.
The state government will provide a host of incentives to the data centre developers so that their projects are completed within timelines.
The Yogi Adityanath government has already given approval to establish a data centre park near Greater Noida to generate employment opportunities for the youth in the state. The government gave approval to this high-profile project which will be set up by the Hiranandani group near Greater Noida on a 20-acre plot, according to a government release. The project cost of the data centre park is over Rs 600 crore.
The government has directed the officials to facilitate land allotment for the ambitious project and also enable its operation without any problem.
The Hiranandani Group, the real estate developers of Mumbai, has earlier set up similar data centre parks in Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad.
Since these data centres consume large amounts of energy, the government has also made adequate arrangements for uninterrupted power supply which will be provided through the Open Access Scheme.
In the absence of adequate data centres, data is largely stored in locations outside the country but with this data park it will now be safely stored here.