The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has reportedly restarted consultations on the draft national data centre policy, as the government looks to sharpen its approach to attracting investments in such facilities in the country.
The policy, which aims to encourage setting up of data centres through single-window permissions, streamlining approvals, promoting domestic manufacturing and providing incentives, was announced in 2020 but never got implemented.
The rapid expansion of the sector and artificial intelligence (AI)-led growth have created a need for such facilities across the country, along with central planning for rising power consumption and coordination with state governments.
Further, many of the features of the draft policy, such as single-window clearances, four dedicated Data Centre Economic Zones (DCEZs), and targeted incentives, have been discussed in recent meetings. It aimed to make India a favourable destination for data centres by streamlining approvals, promoting domestic manufacturing and providing incentives.
The government has partially adopted one of its key suggestions, granting infrastructure status to data centres with capacity of 5 megawatt (MW) or higher. Moreover, the DCEZ was envisioned to create an ecosystem of hyperscalers, cloud service providers, IT companies, research and development units and other allied industries at select locations.
