UP government to put data centres under ESMA

Virendra Singh Rawat

Lucknow / Dec 29, 2020

The Uttar Pradesh government, which is hammering out a data centre policy, is looking to include the new age industry under the stringent Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) to ensure uninhibited operation and power supply.

The proposed policy will target attracting Rs 20,000 crore worth of private investment and creation of 150,000 job opportunities in the next five years. The draft of the new UP data centre policy has been prepared and steps are now being taken to get the state cabinet nod for its speedier implementation.

The new policy will push for setting up at least three data centre parks and 10 smaller data centre units in the state.

Interestingly, the state has so far received data centre proposals totalling Rs 10,000 crore from the private sector, including Adani Group, Hiranandani Group, RackBank etc. On November 30, chief minister Yogi Adityanath had virtually laid the foundation of Hiranandani’s 20 acre data centre park in Greater Noida.

Data centre refers to a place housing computing infrastructure viz. servers, routers, switches and firewalls, apart from supporting paraphernalia like backup equipment, fire suppression facilities and air conditioning.

Since, a data centre entails heavy energy consumption, the UP government has proposed to allow them open access electricity for uninterrupted supply.

Other major sops to be provided to the state date centre investors include interest subsidy, land subsidy, stamp duty waiver, electricity duty and transmission duty waiver etc apart from other incentives.

Besides, the Centre is actively pursuing the policy of data localisation for greater data security amid the fast penetration of internet and online services in both the public and private sector domains.

Currently, due to the lack of robust data centres in India, the domestic data are preserved in servers based in foreign companies, including USA, thus exposing vital onshore data pertaining to banking, social media, retail, tourism, health segments etc, to possible cyber attacks and manipulations.

Once data centres are developed indigenously, there would be greater data security within the country’s geography.