Court Orders Permit Check on Google-Adani Data Centre

The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Monday directed the state government to ensure the $15 billion Google-Adani data centre project in Visakhapatnam has all required legal and environmental permissions before work proceeds.

“Environmental clearances cannot be given a go by,” the bench led by Chief Justice Lisa Gill said, instructing authorities to verify compliance at the site.

The court did not grant the interim status quo the petitioner sought. Instead, it ordered the state to file a consolidated response from all departments involved in the project’s approvals. The matter will be heard next week.

Bolisetty Satyanarayana, who filed the plea, challenged the project approvals through counsel Virag Gupta. Gupta raised several objections. The 160-acre site includes land belonging to the Simhachalam Devasthanam temple. He argued the land could not be alienated without the High Court’s permission, citing an earlier court order.

“The environment clearance is only for the building. It’s not for the data centre,” Gupta told the court. He also said Google’s name does not appear in any of the clearances – “not even a single page” – even though the project was announced as a Google-Adani partnership.

The state disputed the temple land claim. Its counsel said the land had not been transferred but leased by temple authorities to the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation. The lease generates about ₹26 crore a year for the temple, the state said.

Gupta also flagged the project site’s proximity to a protected area – about 0.86 km away – which could require Category A environmental treatment and central-level scrutiny. Water and electricity requirements for the gigawatt-scale campus were questioned, with concerns about a nearby reservoir’s capacity.

Google announced the Visakhapatnam AI hub in October 2025, planning $15 billion in investment over five years. It later partnered with Adani Enterprises through AdaniConneX to develop a data centre campus with nearly 1 GW of capacity. Construction started in April 2026.

Visakhapatnam has become a magnet for large data centre investments. In April, Reliance Industries was reported to be planning a ₹1.6 trillion ($17 billion-plus) investment for a 1.5 GW data centre cluster in the same area, with dedicated solar power and battery storage, according to The Economic Times. In September 2025, Andhra Pradesh said it was targeting 6 GW of data centre capacity. The state’s Data Centre Policy 4.0 offers incentives, including 100% GST reimbursement on capital goods and a 10% capital subsidy on machinery for eligible projects.

The court’s eventual ruling could affect how large data centre projects are assessed for environmental and regulatory compliance in India.

Queries emailed to the Adani Group and Google India remained unanswered at press time.