YSR Congress leader and former chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy has come out with an alternative proposal for Amaravati, calling it a “Plan B” for the capital region, as the Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed the AP Reorganization (Amendment) Bill, 2026, seeking to declare Amaravati as the permanent capital of Andhra Pradesh.
Addressing a press conference at the party office, Jagan suggested that instead of limiting the capital to Amaravati, the government should consider declaring the 110-km urban corridor stretching from Machilipatnam to Vijayawada and Guntur as the state capital district.
He suggested naming the area as ‘Mavigaon’ which represents Machilipatnam, Vijayawada and Guntur. He said it could be developed as an integrated metropolitan area, arguing that such a model would open the door to long-term economic and infrastructural growth.
“If the government thinks the name ‘Mavegaon’ reminds people of Jagan, it can choose another name,” he said.
In the afternoon, YSRCP MPs, led by party parliamentary leader P Mithun Reddy, staged a walkout from the Lok Sabha, stating that the bill, in its current form, did not provide any meaningful benefit to the state and was instead being used to provide legal cover for a politically motivated project in Amaravati.
Explaining the rationale behind the ‘Maphegun’ proposal, Jagan said Machilipatnam is about 70 km from Vijayawada, while Vijayawada is about 40 km from Guntur, making the tri-city belt a natural urban and economic cluster.
He said that instead of concentrating all development in one limited area, the government should declare the entire corridor as a capital zone, thus allowing distributed growth and better use of public investment.
According to him, the total population of the three regions is close to 4 million, and with the focus on spending on infrastructure, connectivity, management and urban services, the region can witness rapid and balanced development.
Jagan said that the YSR Congress Party was not opposed to Amaravati or any particular region and asserted that the party had never taken an anti-region stand on the capital issue.
He said that the concept of “capital” does not exist explicitly in the constitution, which instead refers to “seats of government.” Citing reports submitted by the Center before the courts, he asserted that the Center has no role in determining state capitals and that it is up to the states to determine their capitals without interference from the central government.
Raising questions over the Amaravati project, Jagan said the government had failed to fulfill the promises made to farmers who had provided land under the pooling scheme. He claimed that even after initially acquiring about 50,000 acres, basic infrastructure such as roads, electricity, water supply and sanitation remained incomplete.
He also criticized the expansion of the metropolitan area to nearly a thousand acres, noting that the cost of infrastructure alone could rise to $2 lakh crore. “How many decades will it take to mobilize this money?” he asked, skeptical about the financial viability of the project.
Jagan also accused the government of inflating costs, claiming that construction costs per square foot had risen sharply. “We are not against Amaravati or any district in the state, but we are against corruption in the name of capital development,” he said.
Participating in the Lok Sabha debate, Mithun Reddy said the Amaravati legislation failed to address the fundamental concerns of people, especially farmers who had offered land to the capital under the land pooling scheme.
He said the government assured landowners that they would be allocated developed plots of land in exchange for the lands they handed over, but claimed that many of these commitments had not been fulfilled.
Mithun Reddy also raised doubts over the financial viability of Amaravati, questioning how the state government intends to mobilize the massive funds needed to complete the capital project.
He just pointed that around $Rs 5,000 crore has reportedly been spent on Amaravati so far. He said there is still no clear answer to the key questions: When will Amaravati be completed, what will be the total cost, and where will the money come from?
He said Andhra Pradesh was already experiencing severe financial pressure and debt burden, and hence the government owed the public an explanation on how it planned to proceed with such a capital-intensive project.
