Question : Domestic Data Centres

Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state:

(a) whether the Government is considering to encourage building up domestic data centres by providing any incentives or subsidies;
(b) if so the details thereof;
(c) whether the Union Government has held any consultations with State Government in southern India in regard to setting up of Data Centres, as many of them have favourable environment such as submarine cable connectivity, global outsourcing opportunities, skilled workforce; and
(d) If so, the details thereof and if not, the reasons thereof?

(a)and(b): Currently there is no policy for providing incentives or subsidies for setting up data centres. Data Centres are an important integral component of the overall Digital India infrastructure ecosystem and the demand for Data Centres is being driven by the growing demand of public cloud & cloud-based services and migration of applications to the cloud. National Data Centre Policy that is in the process of discussion, aims to make India, pre-eminent destination for Cloud and Data Centres in this part of the world. The policy will make India a Global hub for energy efficient green Data Centre & Cloud Services and encourage use of indigenous equipment and IT products/solutions for a safe and trusted hosting infrastructure in the country.

(c)and(d): The Ministry conducts public consultations for all policies as a norm. This policy too has gone through public consultations including a recent public consultation at Chennai, on 25th February 2022, which was attended by over 65 corporates and Central/State government officials in person and over 295 other stakeholders over video conferencing. The inputs received are being studied.

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