From US midterms to AP local body polls, how data centres are becoming an election issue

Follow TNM’s WhatsApp channel for news updates and story links. Without missing a beat, Alla Saroja responded quickly to the question posed to her. “This victory is one for the farmers and one against data centres," she said. “It shouldn’t be viewed as a personal victory.” In Bhogapuram, two farmers took their fight against data centres from the streets to the ballot box and won. Alla Saroja and Godla Seshagiri, who contested independently from ward divisions one and two in the November 4 and 5 Andhra Pradesh local body elections, defeated their rivals on a plank that no political party was willing to touch. Both these farmers centred their campaigns around their opposition to data centres. Their victories come alongside the 2026 US midterm elections, in which opposition to data centre expansions were a significant electoral issue. The November 3 results in the US offered a striking example of how opposition to data centres moved beyond campaign speeches and into the ballot box. Unlike in India, where voters elect representatives who subsequently make decisions on local development, several US jurisdictions allow residents to directly vote on local development proposals through ballot measures and referendums. This meant that voters in several states could directly decide whether data centre projects should be banned, restricted or subjected to additional conditions.According to Reuters, voters in 10 states backed restrictions on data centre development or rejected local proposals. Of the 41 ballot measures tracked by Redbud Consulting, 40 sought to restrict data centre expansion. In Ohio, a state with reportedly the fourth largest number of data centres in the US, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown defeated Republican Jon Husted in a closely watched Senate contest. OpenAI, Nvidia and Japanese investors like SB Energy, broke ground on a project touted to be the ‘world’s largest’ data centre in August. Brown made opposition to data centre expansions a prominent part of his campaign, portraying Husted as closely aligned with AI companies.In Texas, Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott, with a campaign that pushed for moratoriums on data centres until new legislation could be brought in. She also highlighted Abbott’s policies offering long-term tax breaks to tech companies. Texas reportedly has the second highest number of data centres in the US.While the Andhra Pradesh local body elections are not directly comparable to the US midterms, a smaller but striking parallel emerged in Bhogapuram, where two farmers turned their opposition to data centres into an electoral issue.Andhra Pradesh's data centre pushThe TDP-led NDA government has made no secret of its ambitions to turn Andhra Pradesh into a major data centre and AI hub, repeatedly holding up the investments as a feather in its cap. During the monsoon session of the state Assembly, IT Minister and TDP working president Nara Lokesh said Google's decision to invest in Visakhapatnam had prompted several other technology companies to take a closer look at the city. More recently, on the sidelines of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Summit, Andhra CM Chandrababu Naidu stated that he plans on bringing an Investment Promotion Act which will ensure that once the state government approves a project, future governments will not go back on assured land allotments. In the same vein, he also spoke about how only “a few people were protesting” data centres and “unnecessarily making it an issue.” In simple terms, the TDP-led government is unwavering on being pro-data centres, a stance that hasn’t affected them electorally. The TDP led NDA swept the urban local body elections, winning a majority of the municipal corporations and municipalities, including the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC). But the victories of farmers like Saroja and Seshagiri tell another story. From resistance to poll victoryIn Vizianagaram district's Bhogapuram mandal, independent candidates Alla Saroja and Godla Seshagiri won from ward divisions one and two, respectively. Both had been part of the nearly 300-day agitation against the proposed Reliance Industries data centre, which is expected to come up on approximately 855 acres of land.TNM could not reach Seshagiri for a comment. However, Saroja (42), who has lived in Bhogapuram since her marriage in 2000, said their electoral victory was an extension of the resistance farmers have been mounting for months.Farmers have repeatedly opposed the acquisition of what they describe as fertile, irrigated, multi-crop agricultural land, arguing that the project threatens their livelihoods. In July, the Andhra Pradesh High Court sought the government's response to a petition filed by 43 farmers challenging the allotment of 854.97 acres for the project.Saroja said farmers first learnt towards the end of January 2026 that a data centre was being planned in their area, when revenue officials began surveying the land. She alleged that there had been no prior consultation with farmers or public meetings to inform them about the project.“We first learnt at the end of January 2026 that a data centre is being built without consulting with any farmers in Bhogapuram. We only learnt of it when collectors, mandal revenue officers and others started surveying the land. We protested against it,” she said.For Saroja, the opposition is fundamentally about the loss of agricultural land and the livelihoods it sustains. By the time the elections arrived, the agitation had continued for nearly 300 days. Saroja said farmers initially considered boycotting the polls but eventually decided to contest independently because no political party had expressed sangeebhavam (solidarity) with their prolonged agitation.She also drew parallels with resistance to data centres in the United States, saying communities there shared the same concerns about sacrificing agricultural land for technology infrastructure.“There was also massive resistance to data centres in America. We have the same sentiment. Why should we give up our land? We grow three kinds of crops on our land, and despite the recent cyclone, our crops have lasted. Why would we give up our land? Or even when we aren’t able to work in farming, we do desilting work in reservoirs. The data centres will affect that too. There is no benefit to this, really,” she said.For the Bhogapuram farmers, contesting the elections was a way of taking their opposition beyond protests and into the political process.Taking data centre concerns to votersBut unlike their counterparts in Bhogapuram, activists opposing data centre projects in Visakhapatnam did not contest the local body elections. Instead, volunteers associated with the citizen-led campaign Stop Vizag Data Centers took their concerns directly to voters through an information campaign.The Stop Vizag Data Centers campaign has volunteers who are residents in Visakhapatnam, including activists and volunteers associated with the Human Rights Forum (HRF) and Green Visakha, both NGOs working on civic and environmental rights. The Stop Vizag Data Centers campaign focused on the proposed Google-Adani hyperscale data centre projects and their potential impact on water security, electricity consumption and the city's ecology.“This isn’t a concern just with the ruling party. Frankly, any party would behave in the same manner. This is about business interests and how the Adani Group’s project is being shielded. We have seen this pattern repeat itself. The state government applies for environmental clearance and gets it within 9 days or so. The criminality is shocking,” VS Krishna, a member of HRF, told TNM.One of the major concerns is the proposed facility near Adavivaram and Mudasarlova, close to the Mudasarlova reservoir, which supplies drinking water to parts of the city. Activists fear that development near the reservoir's catchment area could worsen existing water concerns.Deeksha, a volunteer with Stop Vizag Data Centers, said that the group neither contested the elections nor explicitly asked voters to reject the NDA alliance.“We neither contested polls nor did we ask people to vote against the NDA alliance. It isn’t like the opposition party has gone against data centres either. We just wanted to spread information on the harms posed by data centres and ask people to bear it in mind while engaging in the local polls,” she said.Around 100 activists participated in the campaign during the two to three weeks preceding the GVMC elections. Their efforts were concentrated in Arilova colony, close to the Mudasarlova reservoir. Volunteers spent three to four hours after work each day explaining their concerns to residents.“The public does understand the concerns with data centres, more so in Arilova. But they also told us that they had no better political alternative. But even aside from the policy issue, the culture of revering political leaders and referring to select political leaders as ‘anna’ (elder brother) or ‘devudu’ (God) also prevented data centres from becoming a full blown poll issue,” she said.Further, she questioned the government's assurances about water availability, pointing out that Visakhapatnam already faces water shortages and that proposed allocations from the Polavaram Left Main Canal would have to account for existing industrial requirements.While the Google-Adani facilities are expected to use air-cooled systems rather than conventional water-intensive evaporative cooling towers, Deeksha questioned whether similar technology would be adopted across the state government’s wider data centre expansion.For the campaign, however, one development stood out as a small electoral victory: YSRCP candidate Varudu Kalyani raising environmental concerns during her campaign, which for the ‘Stop Vizag Data Centers’ movement meant that the noise they made at the very least caused a dent.Addressing the media on the last day of the campaign, YSRCP candidate Kalyani spoke about how the Simhachlam hills near Arilova colony were full of lush greenery. “Now it looks desolate. Aside from global warming, by doing away with greenery, the water is neither regulated nor does it slow down to reservoirs from catchment areas. This causes reservoirs to dry up. This causes water issues, and the TDP-led government is to blame,” Kalyani had said. The reference to the lack of greenery in Simhachalam Hills was a direct attack on the extensive hill cutting, landscape levelling, and clearing of trees and vegetation to build temporary access roads and site infrastructure for data centres. “At the end of it, Saroja and Seshagiri’s victory was a principled victory won on a single point agenda. Even aside from Vizag, anger is growing against data centres in other pockets in areas like Rambilli. The state government would do well to listen, as so far they have been bypassing due process to a shocking extent,” Krishna concluded. TNM is an ad-free platform, not beholden to anybody. We’re only accountable to our readers. Subscribe to TNM to keep us free.