Data centres will not touch Visakhapatnam’s drinking water, Lokesh tells Andhra Assembly

Data centres will not take water from the taps of Visakhapatnam, Information Technology Minister Nara Lokesh told the Assembly on Wednesday (August 19, 2026), answering what he called deliberate misinformation about their environmental cost.

Replying to a question from Jana Sena MLA Lokam Naga Madhavi during the Monsoon session, Mr. Lokesh said Google’s decision to invest in Visakhapatnam had brought other IT companies to look at the city. “Data centres are critical to the AI-driven digital economy and to India’s data sovereignty, particularly amid emerging geopolitical challenges,” he said.

He put numbers to the water question, saying, “Once the proposed data-centre ecosystem reaches the targeted 6.5 GW capacity, it is estimated to require around 3 tmc ft of water annually based on current technology,” he said. “Newer cooling technologies are expected to reduce water consumption further.”

That water would come from the industrial share of Polavaram, he said, and not from what is meant for the city’s residents. The government is committed to supplying Visakhapatnam’s own needs from Polavaram by gravity within 18 months, he said, with separate pipelines laid for the data centres.

“A 1 GW thermal power plant consumes nearly 10 times more water annually than a data centre,” he said. “Why are protests over water usage focused only on data centres?” he asked the protesters.

Mr. Lokesh said the Chief Minister had fixed a ceiling of 6.5 GW for data-centre allocations and that the target had now been met in full. The government would give preference to companies that showed strong environmental responsibility, he said.

What is Google’s project?

The dispute is about the Google Cloud AI hub at Tarluvada, on the outskirts of Visakhapatnam, whose foundation stone the Chief Minister laid on April 28. The 1 GW hyperscale centre is coming up on 601.4 acres at an investment of ₹1.35 lakh crore, run by Google’s subsidiary Raiden Infotech with Adani Infra, and forms part of Google’s announced $15 billion commitment in the State. The government has said it plans a 6.5 GW digital hub across Andhra Pradesh over the longer term, and that the Visakhapatnam project will be inaugurated on September 28, 2028.