Environment and forest minister Jairam Ramesh has hit out the Bharatiya Janata Party and the CPI(M), saying the political parties averse to the India-US nuclear deal continuing the "agenda" of instigating people to oppose the first nuclear power plant to be set up under the agreement at Jaitapur in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra.

Refusing to review the environment clearance given to the 9,900 mw power plant last month, he asserted that it covers as many as 35 conditions for ecological safeguards of the sensitive coastal area in the Western Ghats and yet the project is being opposed by those who have a "different agenda" to use the environment gun to scuttle it, making mockery of the well thought-out clearance.

"As far as environment clearance is concerned, we have done all that is required and the interest groups should not use environment as a shield behind which they start firing their guns at government," Ramesh told reporters here.

He went on to affirm that "there are political parties who have never agreed with the fact that our prime minister concluded the most successful civil nuclear agreement, of which Jaitapur is the first one to be set up under a French collaboration" and warned them not to politicise the issue.

He was commenting on senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha and spokesman Rajiv Pratap Rudy and CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat demanding on Tuesday that the government should reassess the environment clearance to the project and address the genuine concerns of the local fishermen and farmers.

"As far as environmental clearance to the project is concerned, it is over from our side. And the environment ministry has nothing more to do with it," the minister said. He asserted that there has been no change in circumstances vetted by his ministry before granting clearance to the project with very strict conditions nor new facts have come to light to warrant any rethink on putting the clearance under suspension.

"On November 28, the environment clearance for the Jaitapur nuclear power project was accorded. The 35 conditions associated with the clearance have also been made public," he pointed out. The clearance was given on the eve of French president Nicolas Sarkozy's visit to India as the project is to be set up with the French nuclear reactors and fuel.

Referring to the agitation by farmers, fishermen and activists around the plant site as also in Mumbai and Pune, Jairam acknowledged that there are "some land issues" regarding acquisition. Those are to be looked into by the Maharashtra chief minister, he said, while stressing that "we have to take local communities along with us."

Sinha accused Ramesh of acting in a "mission mode" to give the conditional clearance to the Jaitapur nuclear plant without bothering about issues of environment, ecology and safety. He cited a report by the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences noting that the project located in a high-to-moderate-intensity earthquake-prone zone will have negative social and ecological consequences for at least five villages and the region as a whole. Land on which the plant will come up is not barren as claimed but fertile farmland and that is why the farmers are up in arms for seizing their land without consulting them, the report said.