Residents in Mekagunda, a village near Indian tech hotspot Hyderabad, are voicing concerns about a Microsoft data center development.
56 locals filed a petition against Microsoft, and 35 other companies and government bodies in Telangana's High Court in July 2023, reports Rest of World.
The petitioners are alleging that Microsoft has illegally occupied land beyond its property, and is dumping industrial waste into a nearby lake.
This, they say, is causing environmental contamination and hurting the cattle and resident's livelihoods.
The hearing for the case has yet to be scheduled, and in May 2024 a judge rejected the request to ask Microsoft to stop the alleged activities while the case was pending.
Microsoft has been looking at the Hyderabad region for several years, with reports first emerging in 2021. The cloud giant's intentions were confirmed in March 2022 as set to build three data centers, having purchased 50 acres of land that January.
This was then expanded in January 2023, when Microsoft revealed it was doubling its planned footprint to six facilities. In May 2024, the company acquired an additional 48 acres in Hyderabad for Rs 267 crore ($32m).
While certainly bringing a lot of investment to the region, locals are concerned about the potential impact.
“These big companies think they can enter small villages like ours, take our land, and destroy it. Build whatever they want wherever they want,” Chinthalapally Pandu Ranga Reddy told RoW. “The demolition of the building has to happen. It should be torn down. The whole country should know the outrage of us farmers. This should set an example, so they don’t make these mistakes again.”
The petition from locals claims that Microsoft is using Tungakunta Lake as a "dump yard."
The petition adds that Microsoft "illegally occupied the cart-way and constructed a fencing approximately for a length of 380 [meters].” RoW, on visiting the village, noted pipelines protruding from Microsoft's wall, and that the surrounding area had been flattened and secured with a barbed wire fence, though could not verify if either had been specifically erected by Microsoft.
A Microsoft spokesperson to RoW said: “Microsoft is committed to building and operating data centers responsibly, for the good of the community. We design our data centers to be more water and energy-efficient, tend to local ecosystems with restoration projects, and grow the local renewable energy supply.”
The company added that it has complied with local requirements and has the necessary permits for the development.
Microsoft requested the petition be dropped in September 2023, denying all claims.
According to Jasveen Jairath, founding convener of citizens’ initiative Save Our Urban Lakes, under state law, all water bodies have permanent boundaries that must be honored, though notes that the government's implementation of these rules is limited.
“The only way this can be resisted is through public hype and public resistance … which, again, doesn’t seem to be happening on an effective scale,” said Jairath, adding that similar treatment of lakes has previously led to flooding.
DCD has also reached out for further information, and to see if any progress has been made. Microsoft responded with the same statement.
Construction of the Mekaguda data center is expected to be completed by 2025, and will employ 180 people.
To support the data centers, the Telangana government is adding electricity substations and flood-water canals to aid Microsoft’s construction, as well as deploying a new 220kV grid supply line.
Jayesh Ranjan, Telangana's special chief secretary for information technology and electronic communications, said: “There is no kind of error or oversight on the part of Microsoft. It is not some fly-by-night, local kind of a company. It is a global company with very high compliance standards.
"Even if the sarpanch [head of the village] or someone else had not pointed out, they themselves do this kind of verification very, very meticulously. So it is very kind of loose and improper to allege these kinds of things.”
