Headquarters: Mandi Bahauddin · Census 2023 — see PBS · Punjab
Mandi Bahauddin District is one of the 41 districts of Punjab, with its headquarters at Mandi Bahauddin. It has 3 tehsils: Malakwal, Mandi Bahauddin and Phalia. The 2023 census counted 1,829,486 people on 2,673 km², and 70.27% of residents aged 10 and over were literate.
| Name | Type | Population | Area (km²) | Urban | Literacy (10+) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Malakwal | Tehsil | 429,303 | 759 | 11.96% | 66.28% |
| Mandi Bahauddin | Tehsil | 764,532 | 759 | 30.39% | 72.69% |
| Phalia | Tehsil | 635,651 | 1,155 | 9.83% | 70.11% |
Between Jhelum and Chenab, known as a clean planned mandi town.
The district headquarters is Mandi Bahauddin. The available public data note is Census 2023 — see PBS. Check the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics and the relevant provincial department for updated official tables.
Government colleges in Mandi Bahauddin, Phalia and Malakwal.
DHQ Mandi Bahauddin.
Punjabi small-town life and river-side villages.
Youth want technical institutes next to general colleges.
Phalia, Malakwal villages
Two rivers hold this file in place. The Jhelum runs about twelve kilometres north of the headquarters. The Chenab lies farther south. Between them sits a grain market that outgrew the village Pindi Bahauddin, took the saint’s name as a suffix, and kept mandi as the prefix because wheat still sets the morning. Elevation is a little over two hundred metres. The old marketing joke “city of lions” is a slogan. The working fact is simpler: this is a canal-and-barrage district that sells grain, sends soldiers and cricketers out, and reads Punjabi at home.
The 2023 count for the whole district is 1,829,486 residents on 2,673 km². Households number 285,989. Towns hold about 346,000 people; the rest remain rural. Men and women are almost level on the sheet (917,125 and 912,222). Among those aged ten and older, 70.27 percent can read — 74.89 percent of men, 65.70 percent of women. That last figure is high for rural Punjab and is the quiet achievement here. Punjabi is the first language of about 1.70 million people. Urdu follows at roughly 84,000. Pashto is a smaller migrant row.
In 1506 a Gondal chief remembered as Bahauddin settled Pindi Bahauddin after leaving Pindi Shah Jahanian. The modern grid grew in the early twentieth century around a chak where Sikh, Hindu and Muslim traders shared the same mandi floor. Partition emptied one side of that floor and filled it from the other. Separate district status arrived on 1 July 1993, when Mian Manzoor Wattoo’s Punjab government cut the file away from Gujrat. Phalia and Malakwal became the other two tehsil seats.
Local memory also keeps two battle names. Near Mong, schoolbooks place Alexander’s fight with Porus in 326 BCE. Treat that as a taught story. The fight that sits on a surveyed field is Chillianwala, January 1849 — Second Anglo-Sikh War.
Rasul Barrage on the Jhelum and Qadirabad Barrage on the Chenab turned Gondal Bar into irrigated squares. Wheat first, then cane, fodder, citrus, livestock. The barrage, not the cloud, writes the yield.
Headquarters tehsil — 759 km², 764,532 people, reading rate 72.69 percent. City count 232,361.
Phalia — 1,155 km², 635,651 people, reading rate 70.11 percent. Qadirabad and the Chenab-side works.
Malakwal — 759 km², 429,303 people, reading rate 66.28 percent. Railway town. Folk singers travelled farther than the grain.
Amrita Pritam (1919–2005) was born Amrit Kaur here and became the century’s most widely read woman in Punjabi letters. Daim Iqbal Daim wrote Punjabi narrative verse from this soil. Ahmad Salim was born in Miana Gondal in 1945. Shaukat Ali and Maratab Ali carried Malakwal onto radio. Hasan Ali is the fast-bowling name. Naved Arif played a short international spell. Haroon Yousaf captained Pakistan at football. Air Chief Marshal Pervaiz Mehdi Qureshi is the service name.
Assembly houses: Bosal, Chan, Gondal, Rizvi, Tarar, Ranjha. Nasir Iqbal Bosal, Imdad Ullah Bosal, Nadeem Afzal Chan, Nazar Muhammad Gondal, Mumtaz Ahmed Tarar, Muhammad Tariq Tarar, Basma Riaz Choudhry, Khalid Mahmood Ranjha. Hasan Askari Rizvi later served a caretaker term as Punjab chief minister.
Colleges in the headquarters, Phalia and Malakwal. Medicine and engineering still mean Gujrat, Jhelum or Lahore. DHQ first; heavier cases follow the same roads.
Figures from the 2023 census. Narrative from the Punjab district notice, barrage notes, and published biographies.
The 7th Population and Housing Census (2023) by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) counted 1,829,486 people in Mandi Bahauddin District — 917,125 males and 912,222 females (sex ratio 100.54 males per 100 females). The 2017 census had counted 1,594,039, so the district gained 235,447 people in six years (difference calculated from the two PBS totals), an average annual growth rate of 2.33%. The district covers 2,673 km², giving a density of 684.43 people per km²; 18.92% of residents live in urban areas and the average household has 6.3 members.
| Tehsil / area | 2017 | 2023 | Annual growth % | Area km² | Density /km² | Sex ratio | Household size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Malakwal Tehsil | 372,171 | 429,303 | 2.42 | 759 | 565.62 | 100.86 | 6.2 |
| Mandi Bahauddin Tehsil | 668,538 | 764,532 | 2.27 | 759 | 1007.29 | 100.40 | 6.4 |
| Phalia Tehsil | 553,330 | 635,651 | 2.34 | 1,155 | 550.35 | 100.49 | 6.4 |
PBS reports a literacy rate (age 10+) of 70.27% for Mandi Bahauddin District: 74.89% for males and 65.70% for females, 81.23% in urban areas against 67.71% in rural areas. Of 1,371,605 residents aged 10 and over, 963,813 were literate. The census also counted 110,399 children aged 5–16 who were out of school (58,793 boys and 51,604 girls).
| Tehsil / area | Literacy % | Male % | Female % | Urban % | Rural % | Out-of-school (5–16) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Malakwal Tehsil | 66.28 | 72.31 | 60.26 | 82.48 | 64.04 | 27,684 |
| Mandi Bahauddin Tehsil | 72.69 | 76.31 | 69.13 | 81.18 | 68.99 | 46,758 |
| Phalia Tehsil | 70.11 | 74.99 | 65.31 | 80.37 | 68.98 | 35,957 |
PBS Table 2 lists 3 urban localities in the district (MC = municipal committee, TC = town committee):
Source: Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Census 2023 — Table 1, Table 2, Table 12. Figures checked against the PBS tables on 2026-10-07.
Mandi Bahauddin District has 3 tehsils: Malakwal, Mandi Bahauddin and Phalia.
The 2023 census counted 1,829,486 people in Mandi Bahauddin District, up from 1,594,039 in 2017 (annual growth 2.33%). 18.92% of the population lived in urban areas.
Mandi Bahauddin District covers 2,673 km² according to the 2023 census, a density of 684.43 people per km².
The 2023 census lists 3 urban localities in Mandi Bahauddin District: Mandi Bahauddin (232,361, municipal committee), Phalia (62,453, municipal committee) and Malakwal (51,327, municipal committee).
70.27% of people aged 10 and over were literate in the 2023 census (male 74.89%, female 65.7%).
The most common mother tongue in the 2023 census was Punjabi (93.2% of the 1,829,152 people in the mother-tongue table), followed by Urdu (4.57%), Pashto (1.77%).
Mandi Bahauddin District is in Punjab. Its headquarters is Mandi Bahauddin.