Season 4 of Panchayat, the much-loved, slice-of-small-town-life comedy, is set to turn Phulera, the Uttar Pradesh village it’s set in, into a battlefield of ballots
Season 4 of Panchayat, one of the most beloved Indian web series set in the heartland of the hinterland, will now arrive earlier than expected.
The TVF series is dropping on Amazon Prime Video on June 24, a full week ahead of its initially announced July 2 release, thanks to an unprecedented move by the makers and the platform to invite audience participation in deciding the premiere date.
When Prime Video opened a poll asking viewers to decide whether they wanted Panchayat Season 4 earlier than scheduled, over 1.5 million votes were cast and the answer was a resounding yes. The decision to drop the show early, cheeky and clever, is in character for Season 4; Phulera, the village it’s set in, is going to the polls, and so the fans got a chance to vote.
It’s election time in Phulera
As Phulera gears up for its biggest showdown yet, between Neena Gupta’s Manju Devi and Sunita Rajwar’s Kranti Devi, two formidable women vying for the Pradhan’s seat, this quietly comic and strangely affectionate series is set to turn into a theatre of grassroots democracy, with poster wars, campaign slogans, rallies and character clashes all beautifully unravelling in the grime of rural India, where chai is essential, and gossip travels thick and fast.
The fourth season, directed by Deepak Kumar Mishra and written by Chandan Kumar, will see the return of the original cast: Jitendra Kumar as Abhishek Tripathi or Sachiv Ji, Raghubir Yadav as Brij Bhushan Dubey or Pradhanji, with his wise counsel and comic detours, Faisal Malik and Chandan Roy as the endearing duo of Prahlad and Vikas, Sanvikaa as Rinki, and Durgesh Kumar as Banrakas.
Also read: Hit series 'Panchayat' to return for 4th season in July; what makes it so popular?
As his wife, Kranti Devi, throws her hat into the Pradhan ring, Banrakas’s wily scheming is pitted against Brij Bhushan’s idealism and Manju Devi’s own evolution from a puppet figurehead to someone with a mind of her own. The show’s trailer, released on June 11, teases a storyline that reveals all the tension of the election season as well as the gentle flirtation between Rinki and Abhishek who, finally, share long, knowing glances; there has been something blooming between them in the last three seasons. We will see where they end up in Season 4.
An everyman of contemporary India
As we saw in the last three seasons, Panchayat continues to retain its signature tone; low-key, warm, and observational. Refusing to caricature rural India, it extracts sharp humour from the everyday; the show evolves from personal to political, without losing its soul. The protagonist, Abhishek Tripathi, is a freshly minted graduate assigned to a government job as Panchayat secretary in Phulera, a nondescript village in Uttar Pradesh. It’s a scenario ripe for dramatic tension — an urban, educated man with aspirations, transplanted to a world of buffaloes and dusty roads.
But where most series would push this fish-out-of-water narrative into slapstick or melodrama, Panchayat resists the obvious choices. Instead, it is laced with a deliberate grace, allowing us to marinate in Abhishek’s frustration, confusion, and eventual accommodation to the rhythms of Phulera. It’s his very ordinariness that sets Tripathi apart.
Far from being a heroic figure or a hapless fool, he is, in fact, the everyman of contemporary India, a person straddling two worlds, unable to fully commit to either. His inner monologue is one of dissatisfaction, a longing for a life that he feels slipping away the longer he remains in Phulera. It is this desperation, subtly portrayed, that gives Panchayat its emotional heft.
Phulera the village, though physically distant from the urban centres, is not a relic of the past. There is a modernity interwoven into its simplicity: a mobile phone signal here, a WhatsApp group there, a solar-powered street light gleaming over mud houses. However, Phulera’s simplicity is not presented as idyllic. It is not a utopia, nor is it a dystopia; it simply exists, with its own peculiar blend of contradictions, which all the three seasons of Panchayat capture rather well.
The good, the bad and the ugly
Ultimately, Panchayat is a show about belonging. The tension between Sachiv ji’s yearning for something more and his gradual realisation of what he already has is pretty relatable to a lot of us. So many of us live with the persistent belief that our real lives are waiting for us elsewhere, in some distant future, in some other place. Panchayat gently nudges us to consider the possibility that meaning and fulfilment can be found in the here and now, even in the most unassuming of places.
The relationships Sachiv ji forms over the course of the two seasons are a testament to this idea. From his growing camaraderie with Vikas, his complex, often unspoken bond with Brij Bhushan to his slow-burn, old-school romance with Rinki, these connections serve as anchors in a life that Tripathi initially viewed as temporary. By the end of the second season, we see a man who, while still aspiring to leave the village, has also begun to see it as more than just a stopover. He may still dream of the city, but Phulera has left its mark on him in ways that are not easily erased.
Also read: Mirzapur Season 3 review: The tale of a blood-soaked throne, lost in its own ambition
In Season 3, Tripathi unexpectedly returned as Panchayat secretary in Phulera, getting a taste of the way bureaucracy works. There were housing disputes under the PM Awas Yojana, and a feud brewing between the local Pradhan and MLA Chandrakishore Singh (Pankaj Jha), an arc that deepened the series’ shift toward politics while keeping emotional stakes alive.
Prahlad was still grieving his late son, Rahul, a soldier who died while on duty; his third-season journey was marked by sorrow and hope, as Pradhan ji’s family, Sachiv ji and Vikas rallied around him. Tripathi also rekindled a bond with Rinki as he reconciled his aspirations with his growing ties to the village. Manju Devi (Neena Gupta), long overshadowed by her husband, found her voice as a leader, and Tripathi’s desire to leave was replaced by a reluctant belonging.
With Phulera on the cusp of its first real Pradhan election, the fourth season is likely to see characters testing each other’s loyalties, with dollops of comic relief thrown in. Expect high-stakes drama, slogan-laced rallies, and campaign strategies set against Sachiv ji’s and Rinki’s tender but uncertain romance. From the looks of the trailer, Panchayat Season 4 seems poised to continue its tradition of mining the good, the bad and the ugly of small-town India for big emotional payoffs.
