Taking note of the allegation that land was alienated to Vizag Hyperscale Data Center Park Limited (VHDCPL), and that environmental clearances (EC) were granted and various facilitation measures were extended by State departments in an allegedly illegal and opaque manner and on misleading grounds, a Division Bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court, headed by Chief Justice Lisa Gill, observed that the prescribed environmental clearance process could not be given a go-by.

The Bench said necessary steps would be taken if it was found that the established parameters had been overstepped.

The matter was posted to next week for all the parties to file their counters and for the Advocate-General to clarify the State government’s position.

Hearing a PIL filed by Jal Biradari national convener Bolisetty Satyanarayana alleging violations in the grant of various permissions to the Google-owned data centre on Monday, Justice Lisa Gill said protection of the environment was a responsibility entrusted to the State government. She said responsibility would be fixed on the officers involved in the process once their names were furnished.

Appearing for the petitioner, advocate Virag Gupta submitted that there was essentially no data localisation in the project as required under the Enforcement of Public Records Act. He said a wrong impression had been created that the establishment of the data centre would contribute to the digital economy, whereas no Indian data would be stored there.

He also contended that the name of Google was not explicitly mentioned in the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) records and that the 160-acre land parcel in Adavivaram and Mudasarlova villages in Visakhapatnam Rural mandal could not have been transferred to VHDCPL as it belonged to the Simhachalam Devasthanam.

Further, Mr. Gupta submitted that the data centre site was barely a kilometre from the eco-sensitive zone of the Kambalakonda Reserve Forest, making it a Category-A project requiring scrutiny by the Central government.

He said the application for environmental clearance was limited to the construction of the building and contained no details of the nature of the activity proposed to be undertaken. There was also no clarity on the large-scale requirement of water and electricity for the project, he said.

Counsel for the government told the Bench that necessary steps were being taken to comply with all relevant statutes and that a consolidated response would be filed on the issue of the ‘lease/transfer’ of the temple land. He said as many as nine departments had been made parties to the case.