Elections 98

State:	Uttar Pradesh
Constituency:	Pratapgarh
Total Votes Polled:	586686
Winner: BJP	Ram Vilas Vedanti	232927
Runner Up: INC	Rajkumari Ratna Singh	164467
Margin: 68460 (29%)

Elections 96

State:	Uttar Pradesh
Constituency:	Pratapgargh
Total Votes Polled:	475751
Winner: INC	Rajkumari Ratna Singh	139326
Runner Up: BJP	Udairaj Mishra	117689
Margin: 21637 (4.63%)

One of the confirmed Congress strongholds, before 1977 when it voted BLD, it had voted for the Jan Sangh's Ajit Pratap Singh in 1962. The next time Singh was elected MP in 1980, it was on the Congress ticket. Dinesh Singh, a member of Indira Gandhi's kitchen cabinet, was elected on the Congress ticket in 1967 and 1971 before losing in 1977. He was once again in Parliament in 1984 and 1989. In 1996, this was one of the few UP constituencies that returned Congress, when Rajkumari Ratna Singh -- Dinesh Singh's daughter -- defeated the BJP's Udairaj Mishra by 22,000 votes. The JD's Bhola Singh was in third place, just 9,000 votes behind.