Abbottabad District (Hindko, ) is a district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. It is part of the Hazara Division and covers an area of , with the city of Abbottabad being the principal town. Neighbouring districts include Mansehra to the north and Haripur to the west in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Muzaffarabad to the east in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Rawalpindi to the south in the Punjab province.
Hazara
During British rule, Abbottabad became the capital of the Hazara division, which was named after and contained the Hazara valley, a small valley in the outermost Himalayas, between the Indus in the west and Kashmir in the east.
The current Abbottabad District was originally a tehsil of Hazara, the Imperial Gazetteer of India described it as follows:
The area covered by the modern district is described as lying between 33°50' and 34°23' North, 73°35' and 73°31'East.
In 1976, the tehsils of Mansehra and Battagram were separated into the new Mansehra District, while the tehsil of Haripur became a separate district in 1991.
Administration
thumb|300px|right|Map showing the administrative subdivisions of Abbottabad District, the Union Councils of Havelian Tehsil are highlighted in green, whilst those of Abbottabad Tehsil are highlighted in red (the names neighbouring districts to Abbottabad are also shown).
Abbottabad district is divided into four tehsils:
{| class="wikitable sortable static-row-numbers static-row-header-hash"
!Tehsil
!Area
(km²)
!Pop.
(2023)
!Density
(ppl/km²)
(2023)
!Literacy rate
(2023)
!Union Councils
|-
|Abbottabad Tehsil
|1,285
|1,003,339
|101.76
|78.39%
|51
|-
|Havelian Tehsil
|342
|256,754
|98.8
|76.08%
|13
|-
|Lora Tehsil
|187
|98,717
|97.22
|73.73%
|
|-
|Lower Tanawal Tehsil
|153
|60,262
|98.88
|71.66%
|
|}
Abbottabad district has one urban administration area – Nawanshehr.
Election 1977
During the 1977 elections Iqbal Khan Jadoon, known as the Fakhr-e-Hazara or pride of Hazara, was elected to the district's NA-12 (Abbottabad) constituency.
Election 2008
With the announcement by the Election commission of Pakistan that elections would be held on 8 January 2008, more than a dozen candidates filed their nomination papers in Abbottabad.
Political campaigns
Abbottabad was the centre of the Sooba Hazara movement that started after the national assembly passed the 18th amendment to change the name of the province from North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The former governor of the province has been vocal in this opposition to the new name
Provincial assembly
The district is represented in the provincial assembly by four elected MPAs (PK-36 to PK-39):
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Member of Provincial Assembly !! Party affiliation !! Constituency !! Year
|-
| Nazir Ahmed Abbasi ||Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf ||PK-36 Abbottabad-I||2018
|-
| Sardar Aurangzeb ||Pakistan Muslim League (N)||PK-37 Abbottabad-II|| 2018
|-
| Qalandar Khan Lodhi||Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf||PK-38 Abbottabad-III|| 2018
|-
| Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani||Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf ||PK-39 Abbottabad-IV||2018
|}
Demographics
As of the 2023 census, Abbottabad district has 236,789 households and a population of 1,419,072. The district has a sex ratio of 100.77 males to 100 females and a literacy rate of 77.34%: 86.20% for males and 68.42% for females. 334,274 (23.92% of the surveyed population) are under 10 years of age. 332,315 (23.42%) live in urban areas.
The population of the district increased from 880,666 in 1998 to 1,419,072 in 2023 which is an increase of 61% over the 25 year period.
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Major ethnic groups
The major ethnic groups in the district are:
- Gujjar
- Awan