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Aaditya Thackeray asks Fadnavis to pause Amazon's Thane data centre until the Kakodkar panel reports
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray has written to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis asking for a pause on a planned 54-acre data centre in Balkum, Thane, until an expert committee headed by Anil Kakodkar reports. Residents cite noise, heat and water.
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Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray has written to Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis asking him to put on hold a proposed data centre in the Balkum-Majiwada area of Thane until an expert committee reports on it. Thackeray wrote on Saturday, 24 October, after local residents opposed the project for about two months, and he asked why the facility could not be built in an industrial zone instead of next to homes.
What the project is
The project is a data centre planned by Amazon on a plot of about 54 acres in Balkum. One report describes the plot as 53 acres, and the investment is estimated at around Rs 47,000 crore. Maharashtra's government has been promoting the state as a hub for data centres, and large facilities of this kind need steady power, water for cooling and land near fibre networks.
In Indian pollution rules, industries are sorted by the pollution they cause into red, orange, green and white categories, and red is the most polluting. MIDC is the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation, which runs the state's industrial estates. When Thackeray asks why the project cannot go to a red-category MIDC zone, he is asking why a facility that needs a great deal of power and water is being placed in a residential area when land that is set aside for heavy industry exists elsewhere.
The residents of Balkum, Kolshet and Dhokali have been protesting through a non-political group called Wake Up Thanekar. Their concerns are noise, heat and water. They fear continuous noise of up to 90 decibels and extra heat around the site, and they claim that the facility would need about 100 million litres of water a day. They also complain that the project went ahead without meaningful consultation with the people who live nearby.
What Thackeray has asked for
In his letter, Thackeray says questions remain unanswered about the facility's energy consumption, its noise, the heat it gives off and its safety. He asks why the project cannot be moved to an MIDC zone set aside for Red Category industries, which are the most polluting. He also asks under which policy the builder was allowed to bring the project to this location, and he says it will make Thane's water shortage worse.
His main demand is a pause. The state government has set up a 17-member committee headed by Dr Anil Kakodkar, a former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, to study the impact of the project amid growing concerns over health and the environment. Thackeray wants the project to stay on hold until that committee submits its report. He has also said his party would relocate the project if it returned to power.
Amazon has promised water-free cooling, a power supply that is separate from the homes nearby, and controls on noise. These are commitments for a facility that has not been built, so they cannot be checked against a working plant. Whether they are enough will depend on the detail: the cooling method, the source of power, and whether the noise figures are measured at the boundary of the site or at the nearest house.
Thane is the stronghold of Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, who left the Thackerays in 2022, and the project is in his home turf. The state government has not responded to the letter in the reports available so far. Data centres are among the largest users of electricity in the building trade, and the cooling of the machines is the second big demand after the machines themselves. Some use large volumes of water, and others use closed systems or air to avoid it, which is the route Amazon says it will take. The residents' figure of 100 million litres a day is their own estimate, and it is the number the committee is most likely to test. In a city that already faces a water shortage, even a modest draw would be noticed. That makes it a test for the government, which has to balance a large investment against the objections of voters in a growing suburb.
The dispute also reflects a pattern seen in other countries, where data centres have been welcomed for investment and then questioned over water and power use once residents notice the scale. The Kakodkar committee's report is likely to settle much of the argument about the facts, and until it arrives the residents are asking that nothing be built.
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