EXCLUSIVE: Yeh Rishta Completes 3000 Episodes, Producer Reveals Hina Khan And Karan Mehra's Exit Was The Biggest Hurdle

Directors’ Kut Productions’ Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai that airs on Star Plus has completed a super successful run of 3000 episodes and is one of the most successful shows on the tube.

Like other shows, this one too has seen many ups and downs and troubles and impediments come it's way but it braved it all and is still standing strong!

Producer Rajan Shahi revealed that at one point in time no one knew what could be shown next. Quipped he, “There was a time when there was some sort of stagnancy in the story and we really were lost as to what we would do next. Every two-three years, with the pace of life-changing, the socio-economic standing, the youth which has come in, one always has to reinvent and readapt yourself.  But I think the most striking part of Yeh Rishta has been that it was able to evolve with every frame and that is why even after 3000 episodes and more than ten years we are the number one rating show in India. That’s because we have evolved!”

However, achieving that feat wasn’t a cakewalk. The producer of the show further stated, “But that surely was tricky. There was a phase, around three years ago when the youth stopped watching the show and that’s when the TRPs dipped. This was the time when we reinvented by bringing in Kartik-Naira (Shivangi Joshi – Mohsin Khan) but we had to be very careful. We predominantly had a family audience but most of them were no more there. We realised, it was not what aspirations the youth had, not the reality the youth wanted to watch, so we had to go into totally changing the way the story was being told.

Speaking of this paradigm shift, Rajan stated, “In the earlier part, the story of Akshara and Naitik was about people who are perfect, people who can never go wrong almost like a Ram-Sita equation! Then we realised the youth today were not connected to the characters. During Akshara and Naitik the TRPs were 1.9 and when we got Kartik Naira, the TRPs shot up to 3+, and we realised, the audiences are looking at very real characters even imperfect ones.”

TRPs form the backbone of the show, hence when it is low, the producers get sleepless nights, same was the case with Shahi who said that they were considering a closure, in fact, they received a notice from the channel to pull the plug on the show. “When the TRPs dipped, we even were considering to close the show because we reached a roadblock. So, the idea always was to have a popular Jodi or a couple but when you just change the faces, the audiences might leave watching the show, even the dedicated audiences stop watching the show, so it was a very calculated risk and also for certain reasons that I did not want to work with those two actors (Hina Khan and Karan Mehra) again, we decided to do the biggest gamble of our lives.

"My team and I got together and decided that we have to reinvent Yeh Rishta, and this was taken at the cost of sacrificing our old audiences but we would be working towards getting more audience. So, we decided on a couple who would have a very imperfect journey in stark contrast to the previous couple who were absolutely perfect whom people were habituated to see in the last 6 to 7 years."

He continued, "The odds were totally against us, we also got a notice to shut the show. This was when we thought of changing the faces, the channel told us they don’t think this might work and you have to shut it down. But again, Star Plus allowed me to take the gamble. We then restructured the whole show retaining the values, the family feel but slightly changing the texture of the storytelling and the characters. This was three years ago, almost 100 episodes ago but now more than three years have passed and our show is still the number 1 show, so I think this was the biggest challenge we undertook. The exiting of the leads and then our decision of taking them out was, of course, the biggest hurdle!"