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Human Rights Forum (HRF), a prominent civil and democratic rights organization based primarily in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, has condemned the Andhra Pradesh government’s attempts to censor its social media posts against the construction of a hyperscale data centre in Visakhapatnam by Google and the Adani Group.
The organisation shared an email received from X Corp, informing them of a request from the Guntur Urban police of Andhra Pradesh, claiming that one of HRF’s posts violated Indian law.
The post on X included a video alleging environmental violations in the establishment of the data centre. It said, “Stop the Data Centre assault on Vizag!” and linked to a change.org petition with the same message.
HRF was informed as per X policy “to notify our users if we receive a request from a law enforcement or a government agency to remove content from their account,” the mail said.
Instagram too restricted two similar posts of HRF in India on May 31, according to a statement from HRF. While one of them shared the same petition, the other included a slide show of images showing work being carried out in Adavivaram in Visakhapatnam for the hyperscale data centre, alleging it was being done without requisite permissions.
The X post in question and the change.org petition had gone viral, HRF said. “Consequent to that, HRF and at least one more user who shared this petition-post received mails from X about requests from Guntur Urban police to remove/restrict the post. Similarly, the same post by another user on Facebook was restricted without any intimation/notice to the user. These are the instances that came to our notice,” HRF said.
Instagram restricted the two posts under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, presumably read with Rule 3(1)(d) of The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which pertain to removing information used to commit an unlawful act on being notified by the government, HRF said.
The post and the petition allege large-scale hill cutting and deforestation for the data centres, “with little transparency, zero public consultation and serious unanswered environmental questions.”
They note that the data centre site at Adavivaram-Mudasarlova is barely 120 metres from the Mudasarlova reservoir, a vital drinking water source for Vizag. Another site in Tarluvada is also very close to the Kambalakonda Wildlife Sanctuary, the petition says.
Environmental activists have criticised the state government’s move to classify the data centre projects as building and construction projects under the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification, 2006, allowing them to bypass rigorous environmental impact assessment conducted by the Union government, as well as public consultations.
HRF and other organisations have been critical of the massive data centre project in Vizag, cautioning that it will require huge quantities of electricity, water and cooling infrastructure, while generating limited employment.
Their petition demanded meaningful public hearings, independent environmental impact assessments, and disclosure of water use, power requirements and project MOUs, before moving on with construction.
Earlier, Meta had restricted another related story by the Environmental Reporting Collective (ERC)—an international network of journalists—which spoke about the alleged forced displacement of Dalits to accommodate the same data centre project.
The viral video, which clocked more than 2.6 million views, was restricted from viewing in India on May 22, ERC said.
Condemning the action taken by the Andhra Pradesh government, HRF said, “The government must desist from censorship and be transparent and democratic in its functioning.”