Panchayat touches people’s hearts because of its innocence: Neena Gupta

The actor has reprised her role as pradhan (village head) Manju Devi on the second season of the Amazon Original series, which also features Jitendra Kumar as panchayat secretary Abhishek Tripathi and Raghubir Yadav as Gupta’s screen husband Brij Bhushan Dubey.

The show, directed by Deepak Kumar Mishra and penned by Chandan Kumar, captures the journey of an engineering graduate who for the lack of better job options in the city, joins as secretary of a panchayat office in a remote village in Uttar Pradesh.

“What I’ve realised is that Panchayat has a certain kind of innocence. That’s why it touches people’s hearts,” Gupta told PTI.

The 62-year-old actor said the writing of the upcoming season is at par with the first one, which premiered in 2020. “It’s a very well written season. There are some new characters also. It was fun to shoot again. We shot in the same village (in Madhya Pradesh) and stayed in the same hotel,” she added.

Discussing the arc of Manju Devi, Gupta said the character would have a “smooth” growth as that’s the essence of the show.

“Manju Devi’s growth as a character will be slow because the kind of woman she is, she won’t suddenly change. She is a very simple woman and doesn’t want much from life. So the change has to come softly and slowly. And this is the flavour of Panchayat. There are no abrupt shifts. The script flows very smoothly,” she said.

Taking on from the first season, the series will delve deeper into the equations of the first season as well as Abhishek’s life as he settles into a new life in the Phulera village.

Panchayat season two, produced by The Viral Fever (TVF), streams on Prime Video.