Lower Chitral District (; ) is a
district
A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municip ...
in
Malakand Division
Malakand Division is an administrative division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Malakand is the second-largest division by population while Mingora, its capital, is the third largest city in the province. CNIC code of Malakand Divis ...
of
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (; ; , ; abbr. KP or KPK), formerly known as the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), is a Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Pakistan. Located in the Northern Pakistan, northwestern region of the country, Khyber ...
province in Pakistan. It is mainly populated by the ethnic
Kho people.
Demographics
As of the
2023 census, Lower Chitral district has 46,028 households and a population of 320,407. The district has a sex ratio of 104.31 males to 100 females and a literacy rate of 66.10%: 76.81% for males and 54.77% for females. 87,378 (27.46% of the surveyed population) are under 10 years of age. 57,157 (17.84%) live in urban areas.
87.76% of the population speaks languages classified as 'Others', namely
Khowar
Khowar (, ''Khōwār'', ), also known by its common exonym Chitrali, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Dardic group, primarily spoken by the Kho (Chitrali) people, native to the Chitral region and surrounding areas of Pakistan.
Khowar is th ...
(or Chitrali), the dominant language of Chitral as a whole.
Pashto
Pashto ( , ; , ) is an eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family, natively spoken in northwestern Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. It has official status in Afghanistan and the Pakistani province of Khyb ...
is spoken in the southeast of the district by 9.36% of the population, while
Kalasha
A kalasha, also called Pūrṇa-Kalaśa, Pūrṇa-Kumbha, Pūrṇa-Ghaṭa, also called ghat or ghot or kumbh ( , Telugu: కలశము Kannada: ಕಳಶ literally "pitcher, pot"), is a metal (brass, copper, silver or gold) pot with a large ...
is spoken by 1.59% of the population.
There are some speakers of the
Madaklasht dialect, a
Persian dialect which is considered a mix of
Dari
Dari (; endonym: ), Dari Persian (, , or , ), or Eastern Persian is the variety of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan. Dari is the Afghan government's official term for the Persian language;Lazard, G.Darī – The New Persian ...
and
Tajik.
Religion
Administrative Divisions
National Assembly
The district along with Upper Chitral District is represented by one elected MNA (Member of National Assembly) in
Pakistan National Assembly. Its constituency is
NA-1.
Provincial Assembly
The district is represented by one elected MPA (Member of Provincial Assembly) in
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly
The Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is a unicameral legislature of elected representatives of the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is located in Peshawar, the provincial capital. It was established under Article 106 of th ...
. Its constituency is
PK-2.
References
Districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Lower Chitral District
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