India has not witnessed any nuclear accident and has no reports of radiation-related diseases, he said adding that criticism of nuclear power plants, especially where new reactors were coming up, were baseless and ill-informed.

Speaking at a meeting of the parliamentary consultative committee of the Science and Technology Ministry, the Prime Minister said there was an urgent need to harness nuclear power to meet the growing energy requirements of agriculture, industry and other sectors and to achieve an annual growth rate of seven to eight per cent.

Though the capital cost of nuclear power was more, electricity produced from it would be ultimately cheap, R Chidambaram, chairman of Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) told the committee, an official release said here.

Chidambaram said India could now buildnuclear plants in five and a half years instead of seven.

He also said four reactors of 220 megawatts (MW) each, being constructed near Kota in Rajasthan and at Kaiga in Karnataka were expected to go critical next year.

Chidambaram said the construction work on two indigenously designed pressurised heavy water reactors of 500 MW was expected to commence at Tarapur soon, according to the release.