Rawalpindi Division · headquarters Chakwal · Salt Range and Potohar · district since 1985 · phone 0543
Chakwal District is one of the 41 districts of Punjab, with its headquarters at Chakwal. The 2023 census lists 5 administrative units in it: Chakwal, Choa Saidan Shah, Kallar Kahar, Lawa and Talagang. The 2023 census counted 1,734,854 people (pre-split boundaries) on 6,525 km², and 77.79% of residents aged 10 and over were literate.
| Name | Type | Population | Area (km²) | Urban | Literacy (10+) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chakwal | Tehsil | 768,622 | 2,167 | 31.75% | 79.63% |
| Choa Saidan Shah | Tehsil | 167,537 | 473 | 24.52% | 79.28% |
| Kallar Kahar | Tehsil | 196,449 | 953 | 25.27% | 79.23% |
| Lawa | Tehsil | 144,611 | 910 | 14.26% | 71.37% |
| Talagang | Tehsil | 457,635 | 2,022 | 17.36% | 75.63% |
Chakwal sits where the Potohar plateau rises into the Salt Range. The district was assembled in 1985 from pieces of Jhelum and Attock. For years the map also held Talagang and Lawa. Those two tehsils have since been notified as a separate Talagang District. This page describes the residual Chakwal that remains: three tehsils, the lake at Kallar Kahar, the Choa Saidan Shah ridge and the headquarters town. Older tables that still print 6,524 km² and 1.73 million people are counting the pre-split map. Official site: chakwal.punjab.gov.pk.
On the residual district, PBS 2023 lists about 1,132,608 people in 187,476 households on 3,593 km². Urban share about 30 percent (334,755). Under-tens about 266,804. Sex ratio is unusual for Punjab: about 99 men per 100 women — slightly more women than men in the counted population.
Literacy at age ten and above on this residual sheet is 77.79 percent (about 86 percent for men, about 70 percent for women in the detailed residual rows). Tehsil literacy inside the three remaining tehsils sits near 79 percent each. That is a different education country from Bhakkar or Ahmadpur East. Out-of-school children are low by national comparison. Pre-split tables for the old five-tehsil district printed a larger population of about 1,734,854 on 6,524 km²; those figures belong to Chakwal-plus-Talagang, not to the current three-tehsil district alone.
Chakwal tehsil — 2,167 km², 768,622 people, literacy about 79.6 percent, about 30 union councils. Headquarters, most of the school stock, and the main road toward Rawalpindi and Jhelum.
Kallar Kahar — 953 km², 196,449 people, literacy about 79.2 percent, about 8 union councils. Salt Range lake, the M2 motorway halt, Cadet College and PAF College Kallar Kahar, and several cement works on the limestone.
Choa Saidan Shah — 473 km², 167,537 people, literacy about 79.3 percent, about 7 union councils. Smallest tehsil. Katas Raj temple complex and the old mining / ridge villages sit here. Dulmial is a known village name on this side.
Talagang and Lawa are no longer administered from Chakwal. Readers looking for those towns should treat them as a neighbouring district, even when an older school or hospital list still prints them under Chakwal.
Punjabi — locally Potohari — is the household language of the great majority. On the larger pre-split 2023 tongue table Punjabi was about 92 percent; Urdu and Pashto were small urban and migrant rows. Armed services, civil jobs and overseas remittances sit beside rainfed farming in the district profile. That is why a village can show a high matric rate and still have thin local industry. Cement and poultry are the factories that do stand on this limestone. Irrigation is scarce: only a sliver of the land is canal-irrigated. Wheat, fodder and livestock on barani fields are the ordinary farm year.
Kallar Kahar lake and the shrine-and-garden ridge above it are the visitor names. Katas Raj at Choa Saidan Shah is a much older religious site on the Salt Range. Neither site is the district economy. The M2 puts Kallar Kahar on the Lahore–Islamabad drive; Chakwal city itself sits off that motorway on the older Rawalpindi–Khushab roads. Water table and a dry year still decide the villages behind the lake view.
Public school lists for the old undivided district ran past a thousand campuses; the residual three tehsils keep a dense high-school layer and a strong girls’ enrolment compared with southern Punjab. Degree options include Government Post Graduate College Chakwal, associate and women’s colleges in Choa Saidan Shah, Kallar Kahar and the headquarters, and a University of Engineering and Technology Taxila sub-campus in Chakwal. Cadet College Kallar Kahar, PAF College Kallar Kahar and cadet colleges at Choa Saidan Shah and Chakwal are the boarding names families already know. Students still leave for Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Taxila for specialised degrees.
DHQ Chakwal is the main public hospital. THQ hospitals serve Choa Saidan Shah and, on older lists, Talagang (now outside this district). RHCs and a long BHU chain cover the villages. Serious cases travel to Rawalpindi teaching hospitals. Earthquake risk on the Salt Range is why disaster plans list these hospitals by name.
Chakwal city, Kallar Kahar, Choa Saidan Shah, Dulmial, Bhoun, Balkasar, Mulhal Mughlan. Talagang and Lawa are adjoining, not current tehsils of this district.
Sources: Pakistan Bureau of Statistics 2023 residual-district and tehsil tables; Government of Punjab, District Chakwal; Rawalpindi Division education and health lists. Checked September 2026.
The 2023 census counted 1,734,854 people in Chakwal District (pre-split boundaries), up from 1,495,463 in 2017 (annual growth 2.51%). 25.06% of the population lived in urban areas.
Chakwal District covers 6,525 km² according to the 2023 census, a density of 265.88 people per km².
The 2023 census lists 7 urban localities in Chakwal District: Chakwal (218,356, municipal committee), Talagang (79,431, municipal committee), Choa Saidan Shah (41,074, municipal committee), Kallar Kahar (27,928, municipal committee), Dhudial (25,686, town committee), Bhaun (21,711, municipal committee) and Lawa (20,619, municipal committee).
77.79% of people aged 10 and over were literate in the 2023 census (male 86.12%, female 69.52%).
The most common mother tongue in the 2023 census was Punjabi (92.04% of the 1,731,689 people in the mother-tongue table), followed by Pashto (5.47%), Urdu (1.66%).
Chakwal District is in Punjab. Its headquarters is Chakwal.