Kohat Division


Kohat Division is one of the seven divisions in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. It consists of five districts: Hangu, Karak, Kohat, Kurram, and Orakzai. The division borders Bannu Division to the south and west, Peshawar Division to the north and east, the province of Punjab to the east, and Afghanistan to the northwest. CNIC code of Kohat Division is 14.

List of the Districts

Districts are the administrative units. They are at a lower level than a division and higher than a tehsil one level below divisions in the administrative hierarchy of Pakistan. Kohat Division consists of the following five districts: Hangu, Karak, Kohat, Kurram, and Orakzai.
#DistrictHeadquarterArea
Pop.
Density
Lit. rate
1HanguHangu1,097528,902482.343.15%
2KurramParachinar3,380785,434232.435.22%
3KarakKarak3,372815,878241.965.36%
4KohatKohat2,9911,234,661412.958.55%
5OrakzaiKalaya1,538387,561252.033.57%

List of the Tehsils

TehsilArea
Pop.
Density
Lit. rate
Districts
Doaba TehsilHangu District
Hangu Tehsil669280,883419.86Hangu District
Tall Tehsil428248,019579.48Hangu District
Banda Daud Shah TehsilKarak District
Karak Tehsil1,299339,983261.73Karak District
Takht-e-Nasrati Tehsil607298,151491.19Karak District
Dara Adam Khel Tehsil446139,839313.54Kohat District
Gumbat Tehsil503124,530247.57Kohat District
Kohat Tehsil911817,610897.49Kohat District
Lachi Tehsil1,131152,682135Kohat District
Central Kurram Tehsil1,470358,670243.99Kurram District
Lower Kurram Tehsil940150,945160.58Kurram District
Upper Kurram Tehsil970275,819284.35Kurram District
Central Orakzai Tehsil39992,819232.63Orakzai District
Ismail Zai Tehsil27539,328143.01Orakzai District
Lower Orakzai Tehsil565125,944222.91Orakzai District
Upper Orakzai Tehsil299129,470433.01Orakzai District

History

In 1941, the area which today covers the division was known as Kohat District. Kohat District was one of five trans-Indus districts in the North-West Frontier Province of British India. It was split into the Tehsils of Hangu, Kohat, and Teri. Here is a description of the area given by the Imperial Gazetteer of India.
Kurram, on the other hand, was an agency in the province bordering Kohat District. It is also described in the Gazetteer.
At that time, the area that would later become Orakzai District was an unadministered patch of land known as Tīrāh. Its description is below.
At the time of the One Unit policy, Kohat District became a part of the then-much-larger Peshawar Division. When the policy ended, though, Kohat District stayed in the division.
The area received full-fledged division status between the Pakistani censuses of 1981 and 1998, and during the same time period, Hangu Tehsil and Karak Tehsil were also upgraded, to district status.
In August 2000, Kohat Division was abolished along with every other division in the country, but was reinstated eight years later after the elections of 2008.
In 2018, the 25th Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan was passed by the Parliament of Pakistan and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly. This entirely and fully merged the seven agencies of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the six Frontier Regions with the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. With this merger, Kohat Division gained the agencies of Kurram and Orakzai, which became districts, and the Frontier Region Kohat.

Geography

Kohat Division has a total area of. Kurram and Karak Districts are the two largest districts in the division, having areas of and respectively. Together they make up about 55% of the area of the division. Kohat District, despite being the most populous, comes in as the third largest district in the province with an area of. The two smaller districts of the division, Hangu and Orakzai make up the interior of the division, wedged between the three larger districts to their west and east.
The important Kurram River begins in this division, in Kurram District.

Surrounding areas

To Kohat Division's northeast, you will find Peshawar Division, to the division's southwest, Bannu Division can be found. To the southeast of Kohat Division, the divisions of Sargodha and Rawalpindi in the province of Punjab can be found, and Kohat Division borders the Afghanistan country to its northwest.

Demographics

As of the 2023 Census of Pakistan, the division had a population of 3,752,436 roughly equal to the country of Croatia or the US state of Oklahoma.
Kohat, the division's namesake and largest city, is situated in Kohat District and has over 200,000 inhabitants. Kohat is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's fourth-largest city and is a fast-growing city whose population grew at a rate of more than 3% every year between 1998 and 2017. Karak, Kohat Division's third-largest city, is the largest city and namesake of Karak District. Having a population just over 50,000, it is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's 24th largest city. Hangu, Kohat Division's second-largest city, is the largest city and namesake of Hangu District. Having a population just under 50,000, it is Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's 27th largest city. In 1998, Hangu was larger than Karak, but due to Karak's fast growth, has been overtaken. Sadda, in Kurram District, is the fourth-largest city in Kohat Division, with about 35,000 inhabitants. It was the second-largest city in the now-defunct Federally Administered Tribal Areas and is the 40th largest city in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is a fast-growing city and is more than six times larger than Parachinar, Kurram District's administrative district capital. Orakzai District is the only district in the division without a single urbanized area. It is entirely rural.
The division has one cantonment, the Kohat Cantonment, adjacent to the city of Kohat which had a population of 36,935, making up the division's entire military population. This made 1.15% of the entire population of the division active military personnel.
In 1998, the dominant language in the division was Pashto, with over 90% of the population speaking it as their mother tongue. Punjabi is spoken by about 1% of the population, and Urdu and Saraiki are spoken by about 0.35% and 0.3% of the population respectively. Of the remaining 5% of the population, most are suspected to speak the Kohati dialect of Hindko, which was predominant in urban Kohat more than a century ago.

Constituencies">List of constituencies of Pakistan">Constituencies

Provincial Assembly ConstituencyNational Assembly ConstituencyDistrict
PK-90 Kohat-INA-35 KohatKohat
PK-91 Kohat-IINA-35 KohatKohat
PK-92 Kohat-IIINA-35 KohatKohat
PK-93 HanguNA-36 Hangu-cum-OrakzaiHangu
PK-94 OrakzaiNA-36 Hangu-cum-OrakzaiOrakzai
PK-95 Kurram-INA-37 KurramKurram
PK-96 Kurram-IINA-37 KurramKurram
PK-97 Karak-INA-38 KarakKarak
PK-98 Karak-IINA-38 KarakKarak