On 23 September 2026 the Odisha high-level clearance authority, chaired by the chief minister, approved a 1 GW integrated data centre park proposed by High Density Data Centre Limited, a subsidiary of Adani Infra (India) Limited, at an investment of ₹1,04,550 crore on about 250 acres of land earmarked near Naraj. It was one of 27 projects worth ₹2.47 lakh crore cleared in a single meeting, and part of ₹1,42,941 crore of data centre and AI approvals that day. No power allocation, water allocation, environmental assessment or memorandum has been made public. That absence has become a public dispute in the state, and the arithmetic behind it is straightforward.
1At a glance
2What was actually approved
The distinction matters and it is routinely lost. A high-level clearance authority approval is a state government decision to permit a large investment. It is not a land grant, a power connection, an environmental consent, a building permit or a financing commitment.
| It does | It does not |
|---|---|
| Signals state backing and unlocks the single-window process | Transfer or lease land — the 250 acres are described as earmarked, not allotted |
| Places the project in the state’s published investment pipeline | Allocate electricity or water |
| Commits the state to facilitation for approvals | Grant environmental clearance, which is a separate central or state process |
| Creates a public record of the proposed investment and capacity | Oblige anyone to spend anything, or fix a schedule |
None of that makes the approval meaningless. In Indian project development, state clearance is a real milestone and usually precedes land allotment by months. It is simply the beginning of a process rather than the end of one, and the ₹1.04 lakh crore figure does not change hands at this stage.
This is described as the second-largest data centre proposal by an Indian conglomerate, behind Reliance Industries’ ₹1.08 lakh crore AI data centre and cable landing station in Andhra Pradesh.
Both are approvals or agreements. Neither is a building. Ranking projects by approval value places announcements above capacity, which is how a country ends up with a pipeline several times larger than anything it can build.
3Naraj or Khordha
The site is published two different ways, and this is the kind of discrepancy that matters to anyone who needs to know where the power and water will be drawn from.
| Source | Location given |
|---|---|
| State clearance listings and several national reports | Khordha district |
| Economic Times and Odisha trade coverage | Naraj, near Cuttack, on about 250 acres |
| Business Standard, quoting the industries additional chief secretary | The proposal was approved; about 250 acres earmarked at Naraj |
Naraj sits on the Mahanadi in Cuttack district, at the head of the Mahanadi delta and next to the barrage that supplies drinking water to Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. Khordha district contains Bhubaneswar and the state’s existing IT corridor. They are adjacent districts with very different water and power situations.
Gridvik records both and does not choose. The state government’s own additional chief secretary, quoted by name, said Naraj. That is the strongest single statement in the public record, and it is also the statement that makes the water question urgent, because Naraj is where the region’s drinking water is drawn.
4₹104.55 crore per megawatt
| Project | Per MW | What ₹1,04,550 crore would buy at that rate |
|---|---|---|
| Uttar Pradesh committed pipeline | about ₹33 crore | about 3,170 MW |
| CtrlS Chennai campus | about ₹56 crore | about 1,870 MW |
| Yotta D1 | about ₹52 crore | about 2,010 MW |
| High Density Data Centre | about ₹104.55 crore | 1,000 MW as approved |
At ₹104.55 crore per megawatt, this project costs roughly twice the standard Indian build rate for the capacity it declares. Two explanations fit and neither is disqualifying.
The money is not all data centre capital. An integrated park may include power generation, water treatment, a cable landing station, internal transmission, GPUs and a decade of phasing. Once GPUs are in the number, the per-megawatt comparison breaks down completely — Yotta is spending more than $2 billion on GPUs alone inside a single 60 MW building.
The 1 GW is a ceiling, not a first phase. If the park is built over fifteen years to 1 GW while the initial investment covers a fraction of it, the per-megawatt figure for what actually gets built first is much lower.
Either way, the announced number and the announced capacity do not describe the same thing, and both are published without a phasing schedule.
5Two and a half crore units a day
This is the part of the record that has become a public argument, and the arithmetic is checkable.
A 1 GW data centre needs either a dedicated generation source or a very large transmission allocation. Neither has been named. In Odisha, coal is the abundant option and the state has surplus generation — which is precisely why this project exists here.
For a supplier, the practical consequence is that the power question is the schedule. Nothing can be ordered until the connection is sanctioned, and no connection has been sanctioned. 30 million litres a day of water is likewise an engineering scope — treatment, storage, pipelines — that has not been defined and cannot be priced.
Gridvik publishes the arithmetic and not the conclusion. The environmental and drinking water questions are for the state’s regulators to answer, and the documents to answer them with have not been released.
6Two Adani Odisha deals, not one
The Adani group has two separate Odisha data centre commitments, announced within weeks of each other, through two different corporate structures and possibly for two different things.
| High Density Data Centre | Adani and International Holding Company | |
|---|---|---|
| Announced | Approved 23 September 2026 | Signed earlier in September 2026 |
| Value | ₹1,04,550 crore | ₹50,000 crore |
| Counterparty | Odisha government, as approver | International Holding Company of Abu Dhabi, as partner |
| Entity | High Density Data Centre Ltd, under Adani Infra (India) Ltd | Not specified in the reporting reviewed |
| Capacity | 1 GW proposed | Not specified in the reporting reviewed |
| Relationship between the two | Not disclosed by any party | Not disclosed by any party |
Trade coverage describes them as separate and states that the ₹1.04 lakh crore project is a standalone venture distinct from the ₹50,000 crore agreement with International Holding Company. Gridvik records them as separate and does not add them together, because no party has stated whether they cover the same site, the same gigawatt or different phases of one programme.
There is a third entity in the picture as well. AdaniConneX is the group’s established data centre joint venture, with a unit operating in Chennai and projects in Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad. It is the group’s data centre arm in most market descriptions, and it is not the entity proposing this project.
Do not merge this 1 GW with AdaniConneX’s capacity, and do not add it to the ₹50,000 crore Abu Dhabi commitment.
Adani now has at least three data centre vehicles reporting into different parts of the group. Until the company publishes a portfolio statement reconciling them, no third party can total Adani’s data centre capacity with confidence — and any figure that does is a guess wearing a spreadsheet.
7The clearance meeting
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Total projects cleared at the 46th clearance authority meeting | 27 projects, about ₹2.47 lakh crore |
| Of which data centre and AI projects | 4 projects, about ₹1,42,941 crore |
| High Density Data Centre, Naraj | ₹1,04,550 crore |
| HCLTech AI data centre | ₹14,257 crore (see record PRJ-042) |
| Two further AI and data centre proposals | About ₹24,134 crore combined |
| Share of the day’s value that was data centres | about 58% |
More than half the value of every project approved by Odisha on a single day was two data centre proposals and two AI projects, of which one accounted for three quarters. This is what an investment pipeline concentrated in one sector looks like when measured by announcement value.
Odisha is a serious power state with surplus generation and low industrial tariffs, which is a genuine advantage in this industry. It is also a state that had no operating hyperscale data centre of significance before 2026, and now carries approvals for more data centre investment than most countries.
8Timeline
- The Adani group signs a ₹50,000 crore agreement with Abu Dhabi’s International Holding Company for a hyperscale AI data centre in Odisha.
- The 46th Odisha high-level clearance authority meeting, chaired by the chief minister, clears 27 projects worth about ₹2.47 lakh crore. Among them, High Density Data Centre Ltd — an Adani Infra (India) subsidiary — is approved for a ₹1,04,550 crore integrated data centre park with a 1 GW data centre on about 250 acres.
- National coverage describes the project as the second-largest data centre proposal by an Indian conglomerate, after Reliance’s ₹1.08 lakh crore Andhra Pradesh project. Trade coverage reports the project is separate from the ₹50,000 crore Abu Dhabi agreement.
- A former Union minister writes to the chief minister seeking clarity on power, water, environmental impact and the public availability of the memorandum and clearance minutes. He states the project would consume about 2.4 crore units of electricity and 30 million litres of water a day.
- No memorandum, clearance minutes, power allocation, water allocation, environmental assessment, land allotment order, construction start or schedule is in the public domain.
- No phase, commissioning or construction date has been published by any party
9Procurement
Rows with a lock are the paid layer.
10Assumptions and method
11Limits and open questions
12Sources
This record was compiled entirely from publicly available sources, cross-checked against one another.
Economic Times Datacenters·Business Standard·Odisha state clearance listings·Odisha TV·Times of India·Moneycontrol·BW Businessworld·Voice & Data·Entrepreneur India·Pragativadi·Orissa POST·Odisha Bytes·New Projects Tracker·Tele.net
Gridvik does not publish source URLs on record pages; citations are retained in the internal source register and are available on request.
A record of a state approval for the largest data centre proposal in India, with the arithmetic that the approval does not answer.
Corrections are free and published with a date.