Google's $15bn Andhra Pradesh datacentre faces court challenges over a nine-day clearance

Andhra Pradesh's government argues for the project in national terms. It says AI datacentres are essential to India's growth and digital competitiveness, and it can point to the government's Economic Survey 2025-26: India generated nearly 20% of the world's data but hosts only about 3% of global datacentres ^[13]. The board-deck version stops there. It leaves out how the permits were obtained.

Speed was part of the plan. Google's partner on the build is the Adani Group, which the Guardian describes as one of India's most politically powerful conglomerates, with a reputation for getting approvals through quickly ^[2]. The nine-day clearance fits that reputation ^[9]. The trade-off is that the same speed is now the basis of the legal case. The petitioners call the government's assessment of environmental and water risks "grossly inadequate, scientifically unrealistic, and misleading" ^[10], and a separate public litigation is before the state's high court ^[11].

The size is disputed too. The permitted 2.51GW is 1.51GW more than the public 1GW figure ^[3][4][5]. When the Guardian asked, Google called the site only a "gigawatt scale AI hub" that was "comparable to other projects" ^[6]. At the permitted size, a year of operation would equal upwards of 30% of the energy Andhra Pradesh, home to more than 55 million people, uses today ^[7]. According to the Guardian, the state government has been accused of obscuring that scale to push the project through fast and avoid stricter environmental scrutiny ^[12].

The Guardian's headline speaks of broken promises and confiscated land ^[21]. Tarluvada's village head, BRB Naidu, told the paper he was torn about whether the project would bring prosperity or ruin. "We have learned that America does not want the problems of datacentres and so now Google is bringing them here," he said ^[14]. "Many in the village are very worried. But the government has refused to answer our questions." ^[15] Opposition in Andhra Pradesh now sits alongside protests over AI datacentres in California, Texas, Scotland and Australia ^[18].

I'd expect village opposition on its own to change little. The state government is allied with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party ^[12]. Pointing to a hillside cleared by bulldozers, Naidu said: "The work just continues every day." ^[16] The tribunal is a harder test. One of the project's three sites around Visakhapatnam lies a few metres from reserve forest, a drinking water reservoir and a wildlife sanctuary home to leopards ^[19]. Water supply is among the risks the petitions say were badly assessed ^[10].

For a lender or tenant counting on this capacity, the question this quarter is whether the clearance survives the tribunal and the high court. We do not know yet how either will rule, or whether work will pause while they hear the cases. A capacity plan written now on the assumption that the permit stands will carry whatever the tribunal decides into next quarter's numbers. The power question runs over the next decade. Some 75% of India's grid runs on coal, and Google has pledged to help generate "new, clean energy" for the hub ^[8].