''Shiksha Mandal'' is an Indian Hindi-language crime drama web-series written and directed by Syed Ahmad Afzal and starring Gulshan Devaiah,

Gauhar Khan Gauahar Khan (born 23 August 1983) is an Indian model and actress who appears in Hindi films and television. She started her career as a model and participated in the Femina Miss India contest in 2002. After appearing in dance songs, Khan made ...

and Pawan Malhotra. It was premiered on

MX Player MX Player is an Indian video streaming and video on demand platform developed by MX Media & Entertainment (formerly J2 Interactive). It has over 280 million users globally. The platform currently operates on an ad-supported model and has a stre ...

on 15 September 2022.

Plot summary

The story is inspired by true events related to

Vyapam scam The Vyapam scam was an entrance examination, admission and recruitment scam. It was functional since the 1990s and was finally unearthed in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh in 2013. The scam involved politicians, senior and junior officials ...

, one of the biggest medical entrance exam scam in India.

Cast

* Gulshan Devaiah as Aditya Rai *

as Anuradha Singh Shrivastava * Pawan Malhotra as Dhansu Yadav *Rajendra Sethi as Jungal Singh *Dr. Niharika Porwal as Aisha Khan *Iram Badar Khan as Vidya Rai *Shivani Singh as Shivani Dubey *Jaihind Kumar as Madho Donald *Ramkrishan Dhakad as Mangal singh *Kumara Saurabh as Nanhe *Sandeep Goyat as Vikram Dangi *Puneet Kumar Mishra as Swadesh Rawat *Abhishek Singh Rajput as Naman *

Anil Rastogi Anil Rastogi is an Indian theatre, television and film actor. He is known for his roles in '' Udaan'', ''Ishaqzaade'' and '' Na Bole Tum Naa Maine Kuch Kaha''. He has over 600 theatre performances and was a former scientist of the Central Drug ...

as Umesh Mahajan

Release

The web series was premiered on

on 15 September 2022.

Reception

Roktim Rajpal of '' India Today'' rated 2 out of 5 stars and wrote "Shiksha Mandal is not a wasted effort by any stretch of the imagination. Gulshan Devaiah tries to salvage the show by giving it his all. The actor does a decent job of bringing out his character’s vulnerabilities, especially in the emotional scenes." Archika Khurana of '' The Times of India'' wrote "What does pass with distinction are the performances of the cast. Gauahar Khan, the fierce and no-nonsense cop, pulls it off in every frame with confidence and ease. It's undeniably one of her best performances to date. Gulshan Devaiah’s intense act keeps you hooked." Suchandra Bose of '' The Quint'' saw similar pattern in most of the scenes. Bose wrote "The two lead actors, Devaiah and Khan, try to hold their own as the narrative jumps from one plotline to the other. With the corrupt politicians, caricaturish villains and a holier-than-thou hero, that story lacks nothing but somehow feels overburdened with its need to be a gripping thriller."

Deepa Gahlot Deepa Gahlot is a theater and film critic, book author, and scriptwriter. She has written several books on cinema, translated several plays (by Manav Kaul and Paresh Mokashi) into English and adapted Paulo Coelho's novel ''The Alchemist'' for the st ...

for '' Rediff.com'' wrote "Malhotra and Devaiah act like they were aiming for an award, while the youngsters playing students are raw, so look and behave naturally." Abhimanyu Mathur of '' Hindustan Times'' wrote "The trouble with Shiksha Mandal is that it lacks subtlety and finesse. It tries to force everything with the gentleness of a jackhammer. The writing is so unimaginative and bland that several characters are reduced to repeating the same lines episode after episode, turning them into caricatures." Shubham Kulkarni of ''

Koimoi Koimoi is a Bollywood entertainment website providing Bollywood news, box-office reports and film reviews. In January 2021, its Alexa ranking in India was 2530. Origin On 23 November 2009, Contest2win.com and Komal Nahta's Faith Entertainment j ...

'' wrote "Spoiler warning! The show ends at a point so bizarre that it just serves as a turn out than a curious angle. It ends so abrupt that you are never sure if it ended if there ever was a climax planned or the makers just forgot to give us the final episode."

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 21328654 2020s Hindi-language films 2022 films