Visakhapatnam convention demands halt to AI data centre approvals

More than 650 activists, researchers, legal experts and community leaders gathered in Visakhapatnam on Sunday to demand a moratorium on new hyperscale data centre approvals in Andhra Pradesh. The People’s Convention on AI Data Centres, organised by the Society for Green Visakha at the Alluri Sitaramaraju Vignana Kendram, called for an independent, cumulative environmental and social impact study before any further projects are cleared.

In his welcome address, Green Visakha president Raja Rama Mohan Roy said the group was not opposed to technology but wanted progress to be accompanied by equity, responsibility and sustainability. He said the debate should be centred on environmental justice, social justice and human dignity.

Delivering the keynote, E.A.S. Sarma, a retired IAS officer and former Union Secretary, questioned the allocation of resources to a proposed 6,500 MW Google data centre in a city he described as water-stressed. He cited large per-gigawatt State incentives extended to the project and linked it to the displacement of tribal families under the Polavaram irrigation project. He argued that inadequate compensation to Adivasi communities amounted to an indirect subsidy to the data centre and raised human rights concerns under Article 21 of the Constitution. He also disputed the technical viability of air-cooling claims, noting that air-conditioning systems are highly electricity-intensive.

V.S. Krishna of the Human Rights Forum said pump-storage power projects in Chintapalli and Anakapalli mandals and a proposed thermal plant in Srikakulam district were being driven by the data centre’s energy needs. He asserted that development cannot mean displacement or the erosion of legally protected rights.

Advocate D. Nagasaila noted that the National Green Tribunal had admitted petitions challenging all three environmental clearances granted for the project. She alleged that the clearances were processed within days without adequate scrutiny.

Environmental conservationist Sohan Hatangadi said local communities bore the heaviest costs of such projects, giving up farms, land and ancestral property while receiving very little in return. He added that even a one-gigawatt facility creates only about 500 jobs, mostly highly skilled positions unavailable to the local workforce.

Heritage narrator Jayshree Hatangadi stressed the need to protect the city’s natural resources and heritage, saying what is protected today is owed to future generations.

Green Visakha general secretary N. Chandrashekhar released the Visakhapatnam Declaration, which seeks a moratorium on fresh approvals, disclosure of project agreements, revocation of clearances granted without due process, an independent energy and water audit, restored land rights for affected communities, and an end to surveillance of protest.