Carved from Lower Kohistan in 2017 · two tehsils · 280,162 people in 2023 · all rural
Kolai-Palas District is one of the 38 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It has 2 sub-divisions: Battaira and Palas. The 2023 census counted 280,162 people on 1,410 km², and 18.8% of residents aged 10 and over were literate.
| Name | Type | Population | Area (km²) | Urban | Literacy (10+) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Battaira | Sub-division | 142,660 | 170 | – | 15.93% |
| Palas | Sub-division | 137,502 | 1,240 | – | 23.08% |
Kolai-Palas is the Palas side of old Kohistan, made a district in 2017 by lifting the Palas sub-division out of Lower Kohistan. In May 2018 Battera / Kolai was cut as the second tehsil. It is not Dassu and it is not Pattan. It is the Indus-facing valleys whose mother tongue on the 2023 sheet is Kohistani — about 202,000 speakers — with a smaller Pashto row and a large “other language” remainder.
Households 33,983. Population 280,162. Literacy 18.80 percent — 24.24 percent for men, 13.14 percent for women. Under-tens about 103,000 (43 percent of the surveyed count). Urban column: zero. Site: kolaipallas.kp.gov.pk.
Battera / Kolai — 170 km², 142,660 people, about 839 per km², literacy about 15.9 percent. Smallest land, densest, lowest literacy of the two.
Palas — 1,240 km², 137,502 people, about 111 per km², literacy about 23.1 percent. Largest land.
Female literacy at 13 percent is the education fact. Girls’ schools that keep a teacher through winter are scarce. Custom still limits movement and speech for women in many houses. The 2013 Kohistan video case — honour killings reported from this belt and tried in the courts — is already in the national record. This page names that public case. It does not retell it as a story.
DHQ-level care is thin. Mansehra and Abbottabad remain the specialist towns. A maternity case on a blocked Palas road is the ordinary risk, not a rare headline.
Sources: PBS 2023; tehsil literacy rows; 2017 district and 2018 Kolai tehsil notifications. September 2026.
The 7th Population and Housing Census (2023) by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) counted 280,162 people in Kolai Palas Kohistan District — 142,588 males and 137,572 females (sex ratio 103.65 males per 100 females). The 2017 census had counted 274,923, so the district gained 5,239 people in six years (difference calculated from the two PBS totals), an average annual growth rate of 0.32%. The district covers 1,410 km², giving a density of 198.70 people per km²; 0.00% of residents live in urban areas and the average household has 6.9 members.
| Tehsil / area | 2017 | 2023 | Annual growth % | Area km² | Density /km² | Sex ratio | Household size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Battaira Sub-Division | 93,879 | 142,660 | 7.24 | 170 | 839.18 | 107.17 | 7.2 |
| Palas Sub-Division | 181,044 | 137,502 | -4.49 | 1,240 | 110.89 | 100.12 | 6.6 |
PBS reports a literacy rate (age 10+) of 18.80% for Kolai Palas Kohistan District: 24.24% for males and 13.14% for females, —% in urban areas against 18.80% in rural areas. Of 134,084 residents aged 10 and over, 25,209 were literate. The census also counted 80,333 children aged 5–16 who were out of school (39,874 boys and 40,458 girls).
| Tehsil / area | Literacy % | Male % | Female % | Urban % | Rural % | Out-of-school (5–16) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Battaira Sub-Division | 15.93 | 20.06 | 11.57 | — | 15.93 | 53,261 |
| Palas Sub-Division | 23.08 | 30.58 | 15.43 | — | 23.08 | 27,072 |
Source: Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Census 2023 — Table 1, Table 2, Table 12. Figures checked against the PBS tables on 2026-10-07.
Kolai-Palas District has 2 sub-divisions: Battaira and Palas.
The 2023 census counted 280,162 people in Kolai-Palas District, up from 274,923 in 2017 (annual growth 0.32%). 0% of the population lived in urban areas.
Kolai-Palas District covers 1,410 km² according to the 2023 census, a density of 198.7 people per km².
Entirely rural: the 2023 census counted no urban population in Kolai-Palas District, so all 280,162 residents were enumerated in rural areas.
18.8% of people aged 10 and over were literate in the 2023 census (male 24.24%, female 13.14%).
The most common mother tongue in the 2023 census was Kohistani (85.19% of the 236,726 people in the mother-tongue table), followed by Shina (7.75%), Pashto (2.81%).
Kolai-Palas District is in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.