union budget 2025-26 – Chennaionline

India’s data centre capacity is projected to expand five-fold to nearly 8 GW by 2030, driven by surging data consumption, rapid cloud adoption, increasing digitisation, regulatory data localisation requirements, and accelerating deployment of artificial intelligence, according to industry estimates Commenting on the upcoming Union Budget 2025–26, Rushabh Dedhia, Managing Director, JIKA EPC Services Ltd, said that AI-led and GPU-dense workloads are fundamentally transforming the design, energy profile, and execution complexity of modern data centres. He emphasised that timely government intervention is essential to reduce execution risks and sustain the sector’s strong growth momentum. “Reliable and competitively priced power remains the single most critical requirement for data centre expansion. The Budget should prioritise faster project clearances for captive and renewable-linked power capacity, along with targeted investments in transmission and distribution infrastructure around emerging data centre clusters,” Dedhia said. He further highlighted the importance of regulatory consistency across states. Data centre EPC projects require time-bound approvals, genuine single-window clearance mechanisms, and uniform state-level policies to reduce project timelines and mitigate execution risks for developers and contractors. Addressing the talent challenge, Dedhia noted that building and operating next-generation data centres will require a specialised workforce. He recommended that Budget 2025–26 allocate funds for a National Data Centre Skilling Programme, focused on AI operations, GPU management, advanced cooling technologies, and energy efficiency. Incentives for hiring and training fresh engineering graduates would help bridge the talent gap and create a future-ready domestic workforce. Given India’s expanding digital ambitions, Dedhia also called on the government to formally recognise data centres as national infrastructure and grant them industry status. “This will unlock multiple incentives, ease financing, and enable more focused policy support for long-term sectoral growth,” he added. On sustainability, Dedhia stressed that India must move beyond intent to implementation. He urged the government to introduce measurable, performance-linked incentives tied to energy efficiency and low-carbon outcomes. “Such measures will encourage investments in AI-ready, sustainable data centre facilities and position India as a responsible global digital infrastructure hub,” he said.