Visakhapatnam civil society demands moratorium on AI data center approvals

Retired IAS officer and former Union Power Minister EAS Sarma at a seminar on AI data center in Visakhapatnam on Sunday. | Photo credit: IN PARADISE

More than 650 delegates, including activists, researchers, legal experts and community leaders, gathered at the People’s Assembly on Artificial Intelligence Data Centers organized by the Society for Green Visakha at Alluri Sitaramaraju Vignana Kendram in the city on Sunday to push for a moratorium on the approval of new hyperscale data centers in Andhra Pradesh until an independent environmental and social impact study is done.

In his welcome speech, Raja Rama Mohan Roy, president of Green Visakha, said the group sought to place “environmental justice, social justice and human dignity” at the center of the debate, and that he was not against technology but wanted “technological progress to be accompanied by justice, responsibility and sustainability”.

EAS Sarma, a former IAS officer and former union secretary in the energy and finance ministries, delivered the keynote address, questioning the allocation of resources to Google’s proposed 6,500 MW data center in the city, which he described as water-stressed, citing the large government incentives per gigawatt extended to the project.

He linked the facility to the displacement of tribal families under the Polavaram irrigation project, calling the disproportionate compensation to Adivasi communities an indirect subsidy to the data center and a human rights issue under Article 21 of the Constitution. Regarding the air cooling technology claim, he stated that air conditioning systems are highly energy intensive and questioned their technical viability for such devices.

Human Rights Forum representative VS Krishna said the pumped-storage projects in Chintapalli and Anakapalli mandals and the proposed thermal power plant in Srikakulam district were driven by data center power needs. Referring to the displacement of tribals and the opposition, he said development “cannot mean displacement or erosion of legally protected rights”.

D. Nagasaila, Advocate, Madras High Court, said, “The National Green Tribunal allowed the petitions challenging all the three environmental clearances granted to the project.” He claimed the permits were processed within days without adequate review.

Sohan Hatangadi, an environmentalist, said local communities bore the brunt of such projects. “Although they give up their farms, land and ancestral property when development happens, they get very little in return,” he said, adding that even a single gigawatt facility created only about 500 jobs, mostly high-skilled jobs unavailable to the local workforce. “It really doesn’t get any better for the local community,” he said.

Heritage narrator Jayshree Hatangadi said, “Protection of the city’s natural resources and heritage remains an issue regardless of the threat and whoever brings it, often in the name of development,” adding that what was protected today was “owed to generations after us.”

N. Chandrashekhar, General Secretary, Green Visakha, issued the “Visakhapatnam Declaration”, demanding a moratorium on new approvals, disclosure of project agreements, cancellation of permits granted without due process, independent energy and water audit, restored land rights for affected communities and an end to protest surveillance.

Published – 06 Sep 2026 21:43 IST