Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said on Monday that the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Park “will roll through, come what may,” sending a strong signal to the Shiv Sena that opposes the project.

“The project has come too far now to be scuppered. The project should come to fruition in the national interest. Hence, it will be given priority,” he said in Solapur district, reviewing the implementation of the integrated water conservation and management (Jalyukt Shivar) scheme.

He said the project might have been cancelled four years ago (when UPA-II was in power), but not now because a lot of capital investment was made on the project, and the State’s energy requirements were growing. His statement came just hours after Shiv Sena MP Anil Desai said in Mumbai that the project would devastate the verdant Konkan region and destroy the livelihood of the indigenous people.

Amid reports of vandalism by Sena activists at the project site on Sunday night, it is also expected to aggravate the fraught ties between the BJP and the Shiv Sena that run the government in coalition.

Earlier this month, a delegation of Shiv Sena MPs met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and urged that the 9,900-MW project not be imposed on the fishermen and mango farmers of Konkan, pointing to the threat it posed to the environment in the context of the Fukushima disaster.