Mumbai, Aug. 3 -- India's booming data centre and artificial intelligence (AI) sector is hitting a power hurdle. As massive facilities expand beyond metros into smaller towns, grid infrastructure-transmission lines, transformers, and sub-stations-is falling behind, triggering a standoff between operators and state governments over who should foot the bill.

The scale of expansion is unprecedented. Over the past 12 months, domestic conglomerates, Big Tech firms, and standalone operators have committed over $250 billion to build new capacity. On 27 July, India's power ministry informed Parliament that data centres are projected to add 26.3 gigawatts (GW) of load to the national grid by fiscal year 2023 (FY32), emphasizing the urgent need to...