Districts are the administrative unit one level below divisions in the administrative hierarchy of Pakistan. Mardan Division consists of the following two districts: Mardan and Swabi.[7]
The area which covers Mardan Division today was carved out of the Peshawar District between the 1931 and 1941 censuses of the British India.[10] The newly demarcated area was a Trans-Indus district designated as the Mardan District. The district comprised two tehsils initially, Mardan Tehsil and Swabi Tehsil, which later evolved to become two districts that forms today's Mardan Division.
This setup continued until One Unit, a geopolitical policy that abolished the provinces making up West Pakistan and consolidated West Pakistan into one province. Following the conclusion of the One Unit policy ended in 1970 and the subsequent reinstatement of the original provincial structure, the divisions that emerged during the policy period remained in the North-West Frontier Province. Thus, the Mardan District was situated within the Peshawar Division.
The area received full-fledged division status between the Pakistani censuses of 1981 and 1998, and during the same time period, Swabi Tehsil was also upgraded, to district status (becoming Swabi District).[1]
Mardan Division has a total area of 3,175 km2 (1,226 sq mi).[1] The area of the division is split rather evenly across both districts, with Mardan District taking up 51.4% of the area of the division (1,632 km2 (630 sq mi)), and Swabi District takes up the remaining 1,543 km2 (596 sq mi).
The division borders the important Indus River to its south and east, and has an abundance of natural beauty.
The largest city in Mardan Division is its namesake, Mardan. Mardan had a population of 358,604 in 2017[12] and was the second-largest city in the entire province (after Peshawar) at the time. Swabi was the second-largest city in the division, and it had a population of 123,412[13] and was the eighth-largest city in the province. The next three most-populous cities in the division were Takht-i-Bahi, in the Mardan District, with a population of 80,721,[12]Topi, in the Swabi District, with a population of 52,983,[13] and Tordher, also in the Swabi District, with a population of 41,420.[13] The whole division had seven municipalities in 2017, with five of them being concentrated in the Swabi District.[13][12]
The division has one cantonment, the Mardan Cantonment, adjacent to the city of Mardan which had a population of 6,871, making up the division's entire military population.[12] This made only 0.17% of the entire population of the division active military personnel (one of the smallest military-civilian ratios in all of Pakistan).[citation needed]
In 2014 - 2015, Mardan Division had a literacy rate of roughly 51%, below the national average of 60%, and just below the provincial average of 53%.[14]
The climate of Mardan Division varies depending on where you are in the division. In the western part of the division, towards Mardan District and the city of Mardan, the summers are hot, the winters are mild and dry, and little rainfall falls through the year. Here the climate is classified as a BSh (or a hot semi-arid climate) by the Köppen climate classification.[19] In the eastern part of the division, towards Swabi District and the city of Swabi, the summers are hot and long but the winters are dry and cool. Here the climate is classified as a Cwa (or a humid subtropical climate) by the Köppen classification.[20]
^ abScott, I.D. "CENSUS OF INDIA, 1941 VOLUME X"(PDF). North-West Frontier Province, Volume X. Government of India. Archived(PDF) from the original on 22 June 2020. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
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