Lower Dir District


Lower Dir District is a district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Timergara is the district's headquarters and largest city. The Lower Dir district was formed in 1996, when Dir District was divided into Upper Dir and Lower Dir districts. On 22 January 2023, both Lower Dir and Upper Dir districts were further bifurcated to create a new Central Dir District.
Lower Dir district borders with Swat District to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Upper Dir to the north and Malakand and Bajaur District to the south.
WWW Official Site

History

At the time of independence of Pakistan, Dir was a princely state ruled by Nawab Shah Jehan Khan. Dir was merged with Pakistan in 1969, declared a district in 1970, and split into Upper and Lower Dir in 1996.

Education

Demographics

As of the 2023 census, Lower Dir district has 202,836 households and a population of 1,650,183. The district has a sex ratio of 97.24 males to 100 females and a literacy rate of 57.36%: 72.57% for males and 43.16% for females. 542,074 are under 10 years of age. 47,860 live in urban areas. 4,439 people in the district were from religious minorities, mainly Christians. Pashto was the predominant language, spoken by 99.54% of the population.

Administration

National Assembly

NA-6 (Lower Dir-I) and NA-7 (Lower Dir-II) are constituencies of the National Assembly of Pakistan from Lower Dir district. These areas were formerly part of NA-34 (Lower Dir) constituency from 1977 to 2018. The delimitation in 2018 split Lower Dir into two separate constituencies, NA-6 and NA-7.

Notable people