Punjab has the highest Scheduled Caste population share of any Indian state, about a third, and the weakest Dalit political formation of any comparable state.
The Ad Dharm movement of the 1920s won separate census recognition. The Republican Party and later the Bahujan Samaj Party had a Punjab presence; Kanshi Ram, who founded the BSP, was from Rupnagar district in Punjab, and the party he built governed Uttar Pradesh four times and has never governed Punjab.
The reasons offered are that Punjab's Dalits are divided between Ravidassia, Valmiki, Mazhabi and Ad Dharmi communities with different histories and different relationships to Sikhism, and that the reserved constituencies are contested by the mainstream parties rather than by a Dalit party.
The Ravidassia declaration of a separate religion in 2010 was a religious rather than an electoral move and had more effect than any party has had.
The land movement in the Malwa is the most active current Dalit politics in the state and it is a movement rather than a party.
A third of the population with a founder of a national party born in the state and no political vehicle of its own is a fact that requires explanation and has not received one.
The Doaba's Dalit households have the longest emigration history of any community in Punjab, and the money that came back built deras, temples and community halls rather than a party. That is one explanation offered and it has not been tested.
The Ad Dharm movement of the 1920s, the Republican Party's brief presence, and the Bahujan Samaj Party's early work in the Doaba are the history, and none of them held.
What exists instead is the deras, the Ravidassia institutions, the land committee movement and reserved seats inside the two main parties. The organisation is there and the party is not.
Academic work on Dalit politics in Punjab, including Ronki Ram.