India's data centre policy in works, says Jitin Prasada

New Delhi: The government is rolling out a policy for data centres, Minister of State for electronics and information technology Jitin Prasada said on Wednesday, adding that India is a very fertile ground for hyperscale data centres.

"In some countries, data centres are taking power used by consumers. So, what happens there, the consumers have to pay more for power. So, we don't want to get into that. We want to ensure that we use technology...," he said at the Central Electricity Authority's brainstorming session on artificial intelligence in the power sector. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had released a draft data centre policy back in 2020, which had proposed granting infrastructure status to the sector and streamlining approvals, but a final consolidated national policy was never formally notified.

In its absence, local data centre policies formulated by 15 states currently remain the top frameworks for the sector. The Centre has announced broad support for the sector through measures such as a tax holiday till 2047 announced for eligible foreign cloud providers using India-based data centres for global operations. The issue of flexibility of power generation for various reasons can be faciliated by AI and support the systems to become more efficient. "The flexibility, which is required, AI will be able to manage and ensure that where the power is required, it's available at that point in time," Prasada said.