In the 2022 assembly elections in Punjab, where the Aam Aadmi Party registered a massive and historic win, most analyses tended to underestimate the caste factor. The ascendance of Charanjit Singh Channi as the chief ministerial face of the Congress simply failed to impress upon the people. The background of the failure of the Channi experiment by way of examining the multilayered reality of Dalit identity in Punjab is explored in this article.
