Central Government expresses support for establishing Data City in Visakhapatnam

The Government of India has expressed its support for Andhra Pradesh’s plan to establish a Data City in Visakhapatnam, with a focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI), advanced research, and digital skilling.

This was clarified in response to an unstarred question in the Lok Sabha on 20 August 2025. The question, posed by Dr C M Ramesh, asked whether the Union Government was made aware of the Andhra Pradesh Government’s (GoAP) intent to develop a Data City in Visakhapatnam, and if GoAP had sought help from the Centre in this regard. A third part of the question also asked whether GoAP proposed to amend Section 52 of the Copyright Act, which lacks specific provisions for text-and-data-mining, making it difficult to train AI models on publicly available databases.

Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Jitin Prasada said that the Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP) had conveyed its intent to set up the ambitious project with global players like Google as potential anchor investors. The initiative aims to foster innovation through AI research centres, skill development programmes, and digital empowerment for local talent.

The Minister confirmed that the Union Government is actively supporting the project, holding several rounds of discussions with the state government. Legal provisions to facilitate the establishment of the Data City are currently under review.

Meanwhile, it is known that the Andhra Pradesh government has been pursuing the agenda of developing a Data City in Vizag. Earlier, the State’s IT and HRD Minister, Nara Lokesh said that the project would be modelled after the success of HITEC City in Hyderabad. As per previous announcements, plans are to establish the Data City on 500 acres in Madhurawada. The goal is to create 2 million jobs in five years through it.

On the other hand, global tech companies have been incentivised to invest in Visakhapatnam. While Google plans a $6 billion 1-gigawatt Data Centre in Madhurawada, Cognizant has acquired 22.19 acres of land in the same area for an IT Campus. Sattva Group is also set to build a “Vantage Vizag” campus in the area with Rs 1,500 crores. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been allotted 20.16 acres of land in the city, and it is set to begin temporary operations from this September or October itself.

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