The district is named after its headquarter town Belha Pratapgarh, commonly known as Pratapgarh. Raja Pratap Bhadur Singh, a local king, located his capital at Rampur near the old town of Aror. There he built a garh and called it Pratapgarh after himself. Subsequently, the area around the fort started to be known as Pratapgarh. When the district was constituted in 1858, its headquarters was established at Belha, which came to be known as Belha Pratapgarh, the name Belha presumably being derived from the temple of Belha Bhawani on the bank of river Sai. It is popularly known as "Belha Several human skeletons along some animal bones and a number of a small stones implements, belonging probably to the Neolithic, have been unearthed in Archaeological exploration at Sarai Nahar in Kunda. It is the only site in the entire valley of Ganga which has yielded human skeleton of such an early age as also the Stone Age implements. On the left bank of river Sai there stand a ruined "Kot" representing a Buddhist Stupa.
Geography
and the Ganges are the main rivers flowing through Pratapgarh district. The district lies between the parallels of 25°34′ and 26°11′ north latitude and between the meridians of 81°19′ and 82°27′ east longitude extending for some from west to east. It is bounded on the north by the district of Sultanpur, on the south by Allahabad, on the east by Jaunpur, on the west by Fatehpur and north-west by Raebareli. In the south-west the Ganges forms the boundary of the district for about. Separating it from Fatehpur and Allahabad and in the extreme north-east the Gomti forms the boundary for about. According to the Central Statistics Office, India, the district has an area of.
Economy
In 2006, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj named Pratapgarh one of the country's 250 most backward districts. It is one of the 34 districts in Uttar Pradesh currently receiving funds from the Backward Regions Grant Fund Programme. Primarily, an agrarian district, for a while now, Pratapgarh has risen in ranks as the top producer of Aonla. The fruit grown here is sold all over India and the world in the form of sweets and medicines.
Railway is the main transport form in this district and some junctions are Pratapgarh, Chilbila and Bhupia Mau. Pratapgarh Junction railway station handles 42 trains daily.
Pratapgarh district has the world's first temple dedicated to farmers, named Kisan Devta Mandir. In this district, farmers are revered as gods. The temple was established by Shailendra Yogi, a homeopathic doctor, in Sarai Mahesh village of Patti tehsil of Pratapgarh in 2015. It was List of people from Pratapgarh List of people from Pratapgarh
