Uttar Pradesh Data Centre Policy Incentives

What is the Uttar Pradesh Data Centre Policy?

The Uttar Pradesh Data Centre Policy is the state's fiscal incentive framework for companies that build data centre capacity in Uttar Pradesh. It is a policy of the Department of IT and Electronics, with Invest UP. The state investment promotion agency, formerly Udyog Bandhu, hosting the policy and handling investor facilitation.

Two versions matter today. The Uttar Pradesh Data Centre Policy 2021, notified on 28 January 2021 and amended by a First Amendment in 2022, was the policy that built the state's first wave of capacity. The Uttar Pradesh Data Centre Policy 2026 is the current framework; the Invest UP portal carries the policy document dated 9 July 2026 and its approval and notification dated 3 August 2026.

This is not a citizen scheme. There is no application form for an individual, no personal benefit and no beneficiary list. What the policy does is reduce the capital and operating cost of building a hyperscale or colocation facility, so that operators who would otherwise build in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu or Telangana build in Greater Noida, Lucknow or Kanpur instead.

The scale of the intent is stated plainly: the 2026 policy targets mobilising more than Rs 2 lakh crore in investment, promotes AI-ready, green and sustainable data centre infrastructure, encourages Tier III and Tier IV certified facilities, and sets a goal of 50 percent renewable energy adoption in new data centres by 2030. The 2021 policy, by comparison, aimed at a 250 MW industry and Rs 20,000 crore of investment with at least three private data centre parks. IBEF records that by June 2025 Uttar Pradesh's proposed data centre capacity had reached 644 MW with investments worth Rs 21,343 crore, the 2021 target having been passed, the 2026 policy resets the ambition by an order of magnitude.

Which projects qualify?

The 2026 policy defines four focus segments by load capacity, and this definition governs which incentive table applies to a proposal:

• Data Centre Parks: minimum 40 MW total load capacity.
• Data Centre Units: more than 2 MW and less than 40 MW total load capacity.
• Edge Data Centres, a single proposal covering at least 10 edge data centres of at least 50 kW each, with a cumulative load of 2 MW.
• Centres of Excellence (CoE); financial support for establishing CoEs.

What incentives does the policy give?

Under the Uttar Pradesh Data Centre Policy 2026:

• Interest subsidy of up to Rs 50 crore for data centre parks.
• Capital subsidy of up to Rs 20 crore for data centre units.
• Land subsidy of 25 percent in Madhyanchal and Paschimanchal, and up to 50 percent in Bundelkhand and Poorvanchal.
• 100 percent stamp duty exemption on purchase or lease from government authorities.
• 100 percent electricity duty exemption for 10 years.
• Transmission and wheeling charge exemption of up to 100 percent, subject to the source of renewable power and the policy provisions.
• Dual grid power subsidy for eligible data centre parks.
• AI Compute Booster Incentive for deployment of high-performance AI infrastructure.
• Green and sustainable operations booster incentives linked to green certifications and renewable energy adoption.
• Dedicated booster incentives for Tier III and Tier IV certified data centres.

Under the earlier Uttar Pradesh Data Centre Policy 2021, which still governs projects sanctioned in its window, the published highlights were:

• Capital subsidy to units at 7 percent, up to a maximum of Rs 10 crore on fixed capital investment excluding land and building, paid over 10 years.
• Interest subsidy to parks at 60 percent of annual interest for 7 years, subject to a maximum of Rs 50 crore per park.
• Land subsidy of 25 percent on prevailing sector rates in Madhyanchal and Paschimanchal and 50 percent in Bundelkhand and Poorvanchal, up to Rs 75 crore for parks and units.
• Stamp duty exemption of 100 percent on the first transaction and 50 percent on the second, for both parks and units.
• Electricity duty exemption of 100 percent for 10 years to units.
• Dual grid power supply to the first three data centre parks established in the state, with the Energy Department bearing the cost of the second grid; available to units on demand at applicable charges.
• Transmission and wheeling charge exemption for 25 years at 50 percent on intrastate sale of power, 100 percent for the intrastate transmission system, and for 5 years on import of energy from outside Uttar Pradesh, to both parks and units.

Supporting government orders under the 2021 policy, several of them published in Hindi on the Invest UP portal — covered declaration of data centre industries as an essential service, implementation guidelines, dual grid power supply under Para 7.1(d)(i), transmission and wheeling under Para 7.1(d)(ii), the increase in power supply under Para 8.4(vii), stamp duty remission and electricity duty exemption notifications.

Who can and cannot claim these incentives?

Eligible applicants:

• Companies and LLPs setting up a data centre park, unit, edge data centre network or Centre of Excellence physically located in Uttar Pradesh.
• Projects meeting the load thresholds in the focus-segment definitions.
• Investors purchasing or leasing land from government authorities, for the stamp duty exemption specifically.
• Operators pursuing Tier III or Tier IV certification, green building certification or renewable energy adoption, for the booster incentives.

Not eligible: cannot apply:

• Individuals. There is no personal or household benefit under this policy at all. A citizen cannot apply for a data centre subsidy.
• Projects below the load thresholds. A facility at or under 2 MW does not meet the unit definition, and an edge proposal with fewer than 10 sites or under 2 MW cumulative load does not qualify.
• Facilities located outside Uttar Pradesh, however closely held by a UP company.
• Captive IT rooms and server rooms that are incidental to another business rather than a data centre project in their own right.
• Applicants seeking to double-claim the same expenditure under both the 2021 and 2026 frameworks.

How to apply for Uttar Pradesh data centre incentives

There is no citizen form. The route is institutional and runs through the state investment machinery.

1. Read the current policy document. Download the Uttar Pradesh Data Centre Policy 2026 and its approval and notification from invest.up.gov.in/uttar-pradesh-data-centre-policy-2026/. Confirm which focus segment your project falls into by total load capacity, because that decides your incentive table.
2. Prepare the project proposal. Build a detailed project report stating total IT load in MW, fixed capital investment with and without land and building, the construction and commissioning timeline, power sourcing including renewable share, and the certification level you will target.
3. Approach Invest UP. Register your project with Invest UP, the state investment promotion agency at invest.up.gov.in, which handles investor facilitation, and use the state's single-window system, niveshmitra.up.nic.in, for the statutory clearances, NOCs and licences the project needs.
4. Secure land and the allotment letter. Take allotment from the relevant industrial development authority. The stamp duty exemption is tied to purchase or lease from government authorities, so the allotment route matters financially, not just administratively.
5. Obtain the eligibility or letter of comfort. Submit the proposal for examination under the policy so the admissible incentive package is determined before you commit capital.
6. Commission the facility and file subsidy claims. After commissioning, file claims with chartered accountant certified expenditure statements, bank sanction and interest certificates for the interest subsidy, and the certifications relied on for booster incentives.

Key dates

• 28 January 2021; Uttar Pradesh Data Centre Policy 2021 notified.
• 9 November 2022, First Amendment to the 2021 policy published.
• 24 September 2021 and 16 April 2023, implementation guidelines and supporting government orders published on the Invest UP portal.
• 9 July 2026, Uttar Pradesh Data Centre Policy 2026 document dated.
• 3 August 2026; approval and notification of the 2026 policy published.

No last date for applying has been announced. Incentive claims are open while the policy is in force, subject to the commissioning and claim timelines set out in the policy document and its implementation guidelines.

Where do I get help?

Invest UP is the facilitation point for data centre investors, and the policy documents and government orders are all published on invest.up.gov.in. The Department of IT and Electronics is the parent department; its startup-facing arm publishes the same policy list at startinup.up.gov.in under Government Policies. Statutory clearances are handled on the Nivesh Mitra single-window portal at niveshmitra.up.nic.in.

No dedicated public helpline number for data centre incentive claims is published on the policy page, so use the contact channels listed on invest.up.gov.in rather than a number quoted on a third-party site. A grievance that is not resolved through the department can be filed on the Uttar Pradesh Jansunwai portal at jansunwai.up.nic.in, which issues a trackable reference number.

How to check your application status

There is no citizen-facing tracking number for this policy, because the claim process runs through the state's institutional investment channels rather than a public application portal. An applicant company checks progress through these channels instead:

• Invest UP registration status. A registered project can follow up on its facilitation status directly with Invest UP at invest.up.gov.in, since the agency is the single point of contact for data centre investors and holds the project file from registration through to incentive sanction.
• Nivesh Mitra single-window portal. Statutory clearances, NOCs and licences routed through niveshmitra.up.nic.in can be tracked by logging into the registered project account on that portal, which shows the status of each individual clearance rather than a single combined application number.
• Direct follow-up on subsidy claims. Once a facility is commissioned and a claim is filed (interest subsidy, capital subsidy, stamp duty or electricity duty exemption), the claim sits with the department examining the chartered-accountant-certified expenditure statement and supporting certificates. Because no dedicated helpline or online claim-tracker is published for this policy, follow-up on a filed claim has to go through the same Invest UP contact channel used for registration, not a third-party number.
• Escalation through Jansunwai. If a registered project or a filed claim sees no movement through the department, a grievance can be lodged on the Uttar Pradesh Jansunwai portal at jansunwai.up.nic.in. Jansunwai issues a trackable reference number, and that reference number, not an Invest UP file number, is what to quote when following up on an unresolved case.

Because this is a project-by-project institutional process rather than a mass citizen scheme, there is no SMS alert or portal dashboard equivalent to a subsidy-scheme application tracker. Status updates come from the facilitation officer handling the file at Invest UP, or from the clearance-wise view on Nivesh Mitra.

Common reasons for rejection

Data centre incentive claims under this policy are turned down or held back for reasons specific to an infrastructure and capital-subsidy programme, not the paperwork issues typical of a citizen welfare scheme.

• Project falls below the load threshold. A facility at or under 2 MW does not meet the data centre unit definition, and an edge data centre proposal with fewer than 10 sites or under 2 MW cumulative load does not qualify at all. The fix is to size the proposal correctly before submission, or to combine sites into a single edge proposal that clears the 2 MW cumulative threshold.
• Land not acquired from a government authority. The 100 percent stamp duty exemption applies specifically to purchase or lease from government authorities. A claim built on land bought from a private party will not clear this exemption, even if every other part of the project qualifies. The fix is to route land acquisition through the relevant industrial development authority's allotment process from the start.
• Facility physically outside Uttar Pradesh. Group companies sometimes file claims for capacity that is technically under a UP-registered entity but physically located in another state. This does not qualify however closely the entity is held; the incentive attaches to the physical location of the data centre, not the company's registration.
• Captive server rooms misclassified as data centre projects. An IT room or server room that exists to support another business, rather than a data centre project in its own right, does not meet the definition used for capital or interest subsidy. Claims of this kind get rejected on classification grounds; the fix is to confirm the facility qualifies as a standalone data centre park, unit, edge network or Centre of Excellence before filing.
• Double-claiming across the 2021 and 2026 policies. The same fixed capital expenditure or interest outgo cannot be claimed under both frameworks. Where a project straddles the transition, the fix is to identify which policy window the sanction falls under and claim once, under that policy only.
• Incomplete certification for booster incentives. The AI Compute Booster, green and sustainable operations booster, and Tier III/Tier IV booster incentives are tied to specific certifications being in hand, not merely targeted. A claim filed before the certification is actually issued will be held back until the certificate is produced.
• Missing chartered accountant certification or bank documents at claim stage. Interest subsidy claims need bank sanction letters and interest certificates, and capital subsidy claims need chartered-accountant-certified expenditure statements. A claim filed without these in the prescribed form is returned for resubmission rather than approved provisionally.
• Claim filed before commissioning. Subsidy claims are examined against actual commissioned capacity, so a claim submitted while the facility is still under construction, or before the eligibility or letter of comfort stage is complete, is premature and will not be processed until commissioning is documented.