RBI Data Centre Opens in Jatni; Modi Warns of Cyber Attacks on Banks
Image: Business Standard / PTI
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday evening opened the Reserve Bank of India’s ₹169-crore data centre and Cybersecurity Training Institute at Info Valley-II in Jatni, near Bhubaneswar, and told the gathering that wars are now also fought by attacking economies, so India’s banking system must be protected from “cyber terrorists”, PTI reported. The campus will host the RBI’s payment and settlement systems, according to AIR News, and is the central bank’s second data centre after Navi Mumbai.
RTGS and NEFT Get a Second Home
The Jatni centre will house systems including RTGS and NEFT, OdishaTV reported, the rails that carry most large bank transfers in the country. Officials told PTI the 18.55-acre site was picked for its “geographical stability”, away from seismic zones and high-risk border areas. The training institute will run courses and research in cybersecurity, enterprise computing, artificial intelligence and quantum computing for the financial sector.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman called data centres the “vault of the digital age” and said UPI handles more than 2,400 crore transactions a month, OdishaTV reported. RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra and Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi were present.
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Modi’s Banking Claim Against the Record
“During the Congress rule, banking facilities were only for a handful of rich and influential persons,” Modi said, adding that things changed after 2014. The RBI’s own circulars show basic accounts predate that year: banks were told to offer low-balance “no-frills” accounts from 2005, and in August 2012 the RBI replaced them with zero-balance Basic Savings Bank Deposit Accounts. The Jan Dhan scheme, launched in 2014, has since opened about 59 crore accounts, but a Finance Ministry reply to an RTI application dated 1 September showed about 15.37 crore were inoperative and 5.72 crore had zero balance, The Hitavada reported.
On fraud, the RBI’s annual report for 2025-26 recorded 10,114 cases of ₹1 lakh and above worth ₹48,021 crore, against 23,722 cases worth ₹32,803 crore a year earlier; the latest figure includes ₹30,199 crore from older cases reclassified after a 2023 Supreme Court judgment. Complaints over digital arrest fraud have also risen this year.
No Date Yet for Live Payment Traffic
The RBI has not said when Jatni will start running live payment and settlement workloads alongside Navi Mumbai, how many people the institute will train each year, or what the institute cost separately from the data centre. Then RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das laid the foundation stone on 22 March 2023. IPB’s earlier report on the Bhubaneswar programme has the Tier IV details. Majhi said this was Modi’s ninth Odisha visit since the BJP formed the state government in 2024.
Source: AIR News (Prasar Bharati) report, PIB release, 24 October 2026 and RBI circular, 22 August 2012. Also based on reporting by PTI via ThePrint, Business Standard, OdishaTV, The Hitavada and Outlook Business.
Image: Business Standard / PTI.
