Microsoft Azure: Microsoft petitioned for illegally dumping waste in local lake

Residents in Mekagunda, a village near Indian tech hotspot Hyderabad have filed a petition against Microsoft, and 35 other companies and government bodies in Telangana's High Court,  alleging that Microsoft has illegally occupied land beyond its property, and is dumping industrial waste into a nearby lake. 
 

“These big companies think they can enter small villages like ours, take our land, and destroy it. Build whatever they want wherever they want,” Chinthalapally Pandu Ranga Reddy told RoW. “The demolition of the building has to happen. It should be torn down. The whole country should know the outrage of us farmers. This should set an example, so they don’t make these mistakes again.”

The petition from locals claims that Microsoft is using Tungakunta Lake as a "dump yard," adding that Microsoft "illegally occupied the cart-way and constructed a fencing approximately for a length of 380 [meters].” RoW, on visiting the village, noted pipelines protruding from Microsoft's wall, and that the surrounding area had been flattened and secured with a barbed wire fence, though could not verify if either had been specifically erected by Microsoft.

A Microsoft spokesperson to RoW said: “Microsoft is committed to building and operating data centers responsibly, for the good of the community. We design our data centers to be more water and energy-efficient, tend to local ecosystems with restoration projects, and grow the local renewable energy supply.”