Railway station at Kotla Jam, Bhakkar District. Photo: ranaiftikhartoor (Panoramio), CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped and resized)
Sargodha Division · headquarters Bhakkar · left bank of the Indus · created 1982 · phone 0453
Railway station at Kotla Jam, Bhakkar District. Photo: ranaiftikhartoor (Panoramio), CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped and resized)
Bhakkar District is one of the 41 districts of Punjab, with its headquarters at Bhakkar. It has 4 tehsils: Bhakkar, Darya Khan, Kalur Kot and Mankera. The 2023 census counted 1,957,470 people on 8,153 km², and 55.68% of residents aged 10 and over were literate.
| Name | Type | Population | Area (km²) | Urban | Literacy (10+) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bhakkar | Tehsil | 809,789 | 2,427 | 19.68% | 58.56% |
| Darya Khan | Tehsil | 421,309 | 1,719 | 22.29% | 51.09% |
| Kalur Kot | Tehsil | 415,708 | 2,239 | 13.37% | 55.43% |
| Mankera | Tehsil | 310,664 | 1,768 | 14.02% | 54.83% |
Bhakkar was not always a district of its own. Until 1982 it sat inside Mianwali. The headquarters town stands on the left bank of the Indus, looking across toward Dera Ismail Khan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Behind the river belt the land turns into the Thal — sand dunes, livestock routes and rain-fed or tubewell plots — not the canal squares of central Punjab and not the Cholistan of Bahawalpur. Neighbours are Mianwali to the north, Khushab to the north-east, Jhang to the south-east, Layyah to the south and Dera Ismail Khan across the river. District site: bhakkar.punjab.gov.pk.
PBS 2023: 1,957,470 people in 313,311 households on 8,153 km². Density about 240 per km². Urban 352,434 (18 percent). Rural 1,605,036. Men 1,016,361, women 941,032. Sex ratio about 108 men per 100 women. Under-tens: 593,924 (about 30 percent). Bhakkar municipal council itself is only about 131,658 people; most of the district lives outside that town.
Literacy at age ten and above is 55.68 percent — 66.81 percent for men and 43.87 percent for women. The female figure is the sharp line. Earlier totals: 1.05 million in 1998, 1.65 million in 2017.
Four tehsils, about 64 union councils.
Bhakkar — 2,427 km², 809,789 people, literacy about 58.6 percent. Headquarters and the largest tehsil. Dilkusha Bagh is the old garden name in town. Khansar is a known union council on this side. Dullewala and Kotla Jam are other urban points in the district lists.
Darya Khan — 1,719 km², 421,309 people, literacy about 51.1 percent, the lowest of the four. The name is the river town. Education plans have flagged a thin higher-secondary layer here.
Kallur Kot (Kaloorkot) — 2,239 km², 415,708 people, literacy about 55.4 percent. Jandanwala is the second market on this tehsil. More sand than riverbank.
Mankera — 1,768 km², 310,664 people, literacy about 54.8 percent. Historic Thal town with an old fort site. Lowest density of the four. Girls’ higher-secondary options have been thin here in published education plans.
This is a Saraiki-majority district of a different shade from Bahawalpur city. The 2023 mother-tongue table: Saraiki about 79 percent (about 1.55 million speakers), Punjabi about 9.7 percent, Urdu about 7.5 percent, Pashto about 2.4 percent. The local Saraiki is often grouped with the Thali / northern belt that also runs through Mianwali and Dera Ismail Khan, not with Multani alone. Pashto speakers are a visible minority in some river and market wards.
Gram, wheat and oilseed on the better plots; livestock — sheep, goats, cattle — on the dunes. Irrigation is a mix of the Indus-side command and tubewells in the Thal. Summer is harsh. Drinking water and fodder in a dry year decide whether a household stays or sends men out to work. Overseas and armed-service jobs sit beside farming in the district profile. That mix is ordinary here; it is not a slogan.
The district profile lists about 19 public colleges (boys’, girls’ and commerce) spread across the four tehsils, plus vocational and technical centres in Bhakkar, Darya Khan, Kallur Kot, Jandanwala and Mankera. School stock in the same profile: hundreds of primary campuses, over a hundred high schools, eleven higher-secondary schools. There is no full public university inside the district; degree students look to Sargodha, Mianwali and sometimes Dera Ismail Khan. The posting gap that hurts girls in Mankera and Darya Khan is the education fact that matters more than the college count in Bhakkar city.
DHQ Bhakkar is the main public hospital. THQ hospitals sit in Darya Khan, Kallur Kot and Mankera. RHCs include Behal, Dhandla, Dullewala, Jandanwala and Haiderabad. District papers list about 40 BHUs and a string of dispensaries. Specialist wards still mean a road toward Mianwali, Sargodha or Dera Ismail Khan. Private clinics cluster on Khansar Road and near the DHQ in the headquarters town.
Bhakkar city, Darya Khan, Kallur Kot, Mankera, Dullewala, Jandanwala, Kotla Jam, Khansar.
Sources: Pakistan Bureau of Statistics 2023; Government of Punjab, District Bhakkar profile; tehsil area and literacy rows published with the 2023 census; 2023 mother-tongue table. Checked September 2026.
Bhakkar District has 4 tehsils: Bhakkar, Darya Khan, Kalur Kot and Mankera.
The 2023 census counted 1,957,470 people in Bhakkar District, up from 1,647,852 in 2017 (annual growth 2.92%). 18% of the population lived in urban areas.
Bhakkar District covers 8,153 km² according to the 2023 census, a density of 240.09 people per km².
The 2023 census lists 8 urban localities in Bhakkar District: Bhakkar (131,658, municipal committee), Darya Khan (68,622, municipal committee), Kalur Kot (34,319, municipal committee), Kotla Jam Dagger (27,726, town committee), Hyderabad (25,319, town committee), Dullewala (25,276, municipal committee), Jandanwala (21,280, municipal committee) and Mankera (18,234, municipal committee).
55.68% of people aged 10 and over were literate in the 2023 census (male 66.81%, female 43.87%).
The most common mother tongue in the 2023 census was Saraiki (79.42% of the 1,956,971 people in the mother-tongue table), followed by Punjabi (9.73%), Urdu (7.5%), Pashto (2.41%).
Bhakkar District is in Punjab. Its headquarters is Bhakkar.