Upper Kohistan District


Upper Kohistan District is a district in the Hazara Division of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.

Overview and history

Before 2014, this region was part of the larger Kohistan District. In 2014, the government bifurcated it into Upper Kohistan and Lower Kohistan districts.

Demographics

As of the 2023 census, Upper Kohistan district has 63,712 households and a population of 422,947. The district has a sex ratio of 104.56 males to 100 females and a literacy rate of 19.05%: 27.46% for males and 10.28% for females. 159,357 are under 10 years of age. The entire population lives in rural areas.
In the 2023 census, 775 people in the district are from religious minorities, mainly Christians. The literacy rate in the district is 59% and 5% for men and women respectively. Source: Baseline study report, Dasu Hydropower Project.

Languages

As of the 2023 census, 87.61% of the surveyed population identified their language as Kohistani and 11.05% Shina as their first language. However the designation Kohistani is applied equally to different unrelated languages in the region, including the Kohistani Shina, mainly spoken in the eastern side of the Indus River encompassing eastern Upper Kohistan, and Indus Kohistani, mainly spoken in the western side of the Indus River encompassing western Upper Kohistan. Speakers of Kohistani Shina commonly selected Kohistani as a single census option.

Administrative Units

In 2014, Upper Kohistan District was subdivided into two Tehsils while on 31st of May, 2018, the Kundai tehsil was upgraded into subdivision and two more tehsils were created. With that change, the district had one subdivision and three tehsils in total as shown below:
TehsilName
Area
Pop.
Density
Literacy rate
Union Councils
Dassu Tehsil1,958148,91476.0515.11%
Harban Basha Tehsil.........25.49%1
Kandia Tehsil1,926165,23285.7913.71%
Seo Tehsil25859,557230.8438.19%1