Adani Group may downsize its investment on Vizag data centre

It is yet to submit revised project report sought by the govt.

Former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu had laid the stone for the Adani project in Visakhapatnam just before the elections.

Nine months after the stone was laid for the Adani Group’s ambitious data centre and technology park in the city proposed at a cost of ₹70,000 crore, there is hectic speculation that the infrastructure conglomerate will downsize its investment plan.

Following the change of guard in the State and the insistence of the new dispensation headed by the YSRCP to submit a revised project report, there is a talk that the Adani Group would invest ₹3,000 crore in an area of 80 acres instead of the original plan to invest ₹70,000 crore in the solar power-driven facility in 500 acres over a period of 20 years.

Sources in the Industries Department told The Hindu that the project proponent was yet to submit a revised plan confirming that the original project signed during the previous TDP regime just before the general elections would not materialise.

The stone for the project had been laid by former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu at Kapulauppada within a month of receiving the proposal from the Adani Group.

Industries Minister Mekapati Goutham Reddy during his visits to the city had stoutly denied that the project was shelved. However, he refused to give details on the timeline and the new investment plan.

There was a buzz in various circles that the Adani Group project would also be scrapped after the State Cabinet cancelled the allocation of land in the city to the LuLu Group’s ₹2,000-crore international convention centre.

“Now it appears that the Adani Group has decided to reduce the timeline to two years with a lesser investment,” Vizag Development Forum vice-president O. Naresh Kumar said.

Hyderabad facility

The Adani Group had announced its intention to set up a data centre in Hyderabad in view of the well-built ecosystem there. He said even after allotment of land at Kapulauppada, the group had not laid a single brick in the past nine months.

Ready availability of manpower and the city not prone to natural calamities such as seismic activity could be reason for the group’s decision to set up a data centre in Hyderabad, he said.