Update (November 19): The last date for submission of comments to this consultation has been extended to November 25. Data centre infrastructure in India is "necessitated by the data localization provisions of proposed Data Protection Act and for protection of the digital sovereignty of the country in an increasingly connected world," the government said in a draft Data Centre Policy published on November 5. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has given stakeholders 15 days to comment on the policy, which purports to transform India into a global data centre hub and reduce the hurdles to set up a data centre in the country. Data centres are critical to the functioning of the internet, and as Indians' data use grows exponentially, data centres are essential plumbing for both internet users as well as businesses and the government. The policy also seeks to create a new industry body to liaise between the data centre industry and the government, the Data Centre Industry Council (DCIC), to be initiated by MEITY. This is similar to the cloud service provider industry body suggested by the TRAI to the Department of Telecommunications, which was resisted by industry associations. It's unclear if data centres will also find fault with the proposed DCIC, as in this case, MEITY does appear to have jurisdiction over this industry. An Inter-Ministerial Empowered Committee (IMEC) will be formed to implement the policy, chaired by the MEITY Secretary, terms of which will be notified by MEITY later. Designating data centres as 'infrastructure'…
