When YSR Congress party president and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy came up with his strange proposal of MAVIGUN (Machilipatnam-Vijayawada-Guntur) as the capital city in place of Amaravati, everybody, including his own party leaders, thought he was just mocking at the ruling Telugu Desam Party-led coalition.
Though some of his party leaders like Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy, Ambati Rambabu and Kakani Goverdhan Reddy spoke in the media in support of MAVIGUN, not many YSRCP leaders were willing to talk about it openly, despite Jagan being heavily trolled on the social media.
But it now appears Jagan is very serious about this alternative capital proposal and might even push it if the YSRCP is voted back to power again in 2029.
At the party meeting held at Tadepalli, too, he made it clear that he had came up with MAVIGUN idea non-seriously, but had proposed it after a lot of thought.
Now, all the party leaders have started singing MAVIGUN slogan and propagating the idea in a big way.
They have now coined a new slogan “Raavali Jagan… Kaavali MAVIGUN,” on the lines of “Raavali Jagan, Kaavali Jagan,” which played a major role in building emotional and electoral momentum before the 2019 assembly elections.
The party leaders are pushing “Raavali Jagan… Kaavali MAVIGUN,” slogan and aggressively taking it up both on the ground and across social media, as part of a deliberate attempt to propagate a new capital slogan ahead of 2029 elections.
Flex banners reportedly put up by senior party leader Karumuri Venkata Reddy have surfaced in several places and quickly gone viral online, suggesting that the campaign is not an isolated or casual experiment, but one that is being systematically circulated among party supporters.
Jagan has argued that the proposed corridor can be developed at a fraction of the cost of Amaravati—reportedly around 10% of the projected expenditure—while leveraging already available infrastructure such as a port, airport connectivity, highways, medical institutions, educational hubs and commercial clusters.
“If MAVIGUN is just another slogan, it would likely have remained confined to party rhetoric or isolated social media messaging. Instead, it now appears a systematic and coordinated push by YSRCP leaders, supporters and digital networks to repeatedly project it as a serious alternative capital model,” a party leader said.
One wonders whether Jagan is merely testing public sentiment or genuinely preparing to make MAVIGUN a core policy and election issue in the run-up to 2029.
If the sustained propaganda by party cadre is any indication, the proposal appears to be a serious political agenda, sources said.