The Reserve Bank of India’s ₹169-crore data centre at Info Valley-II in Jatani, Odisha, is scheduled to be inaugurated on October 25, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi expected to attend the event. The facility, near Bhubaneswar in Khordha district, is designed to function as a secondary backup to the RBI’s primary data centre at Kharghar in Navi Mumbai.
The project places a critical financial-infrastructure facility outside the RBI’s existing western India location. According to the report by Odisha Post, officials selected Jatani because of its geographical stability and its separation from seismically active zones and high-risk international border areas. The stated objective is to reduce the facility’s exposure to natural disasters and geopolitical threats affecting infrastructure that supports payment systems and financial regulation.
The foundation stone for the centre was laid by then RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das on March 22, 2023. The facility is located in the Info Valley-II area of Jatani, an emerging institutional and technology-oriented zone near Bhubaneswar. The report did not provide details of the centre’s built-up area, computing capacity, staffing levels or the specific systems that will be backed up there.
The inauguration programme is expected to begin after the Prime Minister lands at Biju Patnaik International Airport at around 4:30 pm. The tentative itinerary says he will travel by helicopter to the Khordha helipad and then proceed by road to the data centre. He is expected to spend about an hour at the facility before departing Odisha around 6:30 pm.
The project has also raised a local resource question. Odisha Congress alleged on October 23 that the centre could require around 2 crore litres of water each day, primarily for cooling. The RBI and the Odisha government had not publicly confirmed the figure or disclosed the proposed water source at the time of the report.
The opposition party has sought details of the facility’s actual water requirement, its source of supply, any environmental impact assessment, expected local employment and safeguards for farmers. It warned that groundwater extraction, if used, could affect local aquifers, agriculture and water availability in Khordha district. These concerns remain allegations because the water demand and sourcing arrangements were not confirmed by the RBI or the state government in the supplied report.
The inauguration will therefore mark both the commissioning of a strategic backup facility and the beginning of public scrutiny over its local infrastructure requirements. The immediate official milestone is the scheduled October 25 event, after which further details about the centre’s operations, resource consumption and local safeguards may become available.
