The manner in which YSRCP MPs staged a walkout from the Lok Sabha during the debate on the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill, 2026; which seeks to give statutory backing to Amaravati as the state capital; has triggered fresh debate in political and media circles.
According to sources, the YSRCP had initially planned to adopt a cautious approach towards the Bill. The party reportedly decided at first that it would neither support nor openly oppose the legislation, apparently to avoid being seen as directly hostile to Amaravati.
However, that strategy appears to have collapsed once it became clear that the Bill was receiving near-unanimous support across party lines, including from parties outside the ruling NDA. Even some Congress MPs from Telangana reportedly spoke in favour of Amaravati.
In the end, YSRCP MPs chose to oppose the Bill and walk out of Parliament. But according to political observers, this may have turned out to be a major political blunder for the party.
In fact, YSRCP Parliamentary Party leader and Rajampet MP Peddireddy Mithun Reddy delivered what many described as a reasonably strong speech in the Lok Sabha, explaining how the Amaravati capital project had allegedly become a “cash cow” for the ruling Telugu Desam Party-led coalition in Andhra Pradesh.
While making it clear that his party was not against Amaravati as such, but only against the large-scale corruption allegedly surrounding it, Mithun Reddy could have simply registered his protest and concluded his argument.
Instead, he chose to walk out of the House, stating that the party was opposing the Bill “in its present form.”
Political analysts point out that Mithun Reddy would have been aware that the passage of the Bill is primarily a legal and statutory exercise, and that it would not fix any deadline for the completion of Amaravati, nor specify the cost of the capital project, as those are essentially administrative matters.
“While Mithun Reddy rightly raised these concerns in his speech, the walkout was a major mistake because it clearly sent a message that the YSRCP is fundamentally against Amaravati,” an analyst observed.
Almost at the same time, YSRCP president and former Chief Minister Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy addressed a press conference in Tadepalli and expressed his strong reservations about the Amaravati project.
Ironically, he also came up with an alternative proposal called “MAVIGUN”, which he described as “Plan B” for the capital region.
According to analysts, these two developments together have reinforced the impression that Jagan may have committed another major political miscalculation on the Amaravati issue.
They believe that by opposing the Bill in Parliament and simultaneously floating a new and controversial capital idea, Jagan may have further isolated himself politically, not only within Andhra Pradesh but also at the national level, where the YSRCP appeared increasingly out of sync after its MPs walked out of the Lok Sabha.