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Administrative units of Pakistan

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pakistan is a country in Asia. It is divided into five provinces and two territories. Pakistan also administers part of Kashmir. This part is divided into two separate areas. The rest of Kashmir is administered by India.

Provinces and federal territories

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Provinces and territories of Pakistan.
State or
union territory
Administrative capitals
Andaman and Nicobar Islands Port Blair
Andhra Pradesh Visakhapatnam
Arunachal Pradesh Itanagar
Assam Dispur
Bihar Patna
Chandigarh Chandigarh[a]
Chhattisgarh Naya Raipur[b]
Dadra and Nagar Haveli Silvassa
Daman and Diu Daman
National Capital Territory of Delhi New Delhi
Goa Panaji[c]
Gujarat Gandhinagar
Haryana Chandigarh
Himachal Pradesh Shimla

Dharamshala (W/2nd)[3]

Jammu and Kashmir Srinagar (Summer)
Jammu (Winter)
Jharkhand Ranchi
Karnataka Bengaluru
Kerala Thiruvananthapuram
Lakshadweep Kavaratti
Madhya Pradesh Bhopal
Maharashtra Mumbai[d]
Nagpur (W/2nd)[e]
Manipur Imphal
Meghalaya Shillong
Mizoram Aizawl
Nagaland Kohima
Odisha Bhubaneswar
Puducherry Puducherry
Punjab Chandigarh
Rajasthan Jaipur
Sikkim Gangtok[f]
Tamil Nadu Chennai[g]
Telangana Hyderabad[h]
Tripura Agartala
Uttar Pradesh Lucknow
Uttarakhand Dehradun[i]
West Bengal Kolkata
38 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Peshawar
39 FATA Peshawar
40 Punjab Lahore
41 Sindh Karachi
42 Balochistan Quetta
43 Islamabad Capital Territory Islamabad
44 Gilgit-Baltistan Skardu
45 Azad Jammu and Kashmir Muzaffarabad

Local government

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Each province of Pakistan is divided into zillas - zillah is an Urdu word (ضلع) meaning district. There are 105 districts in Pakistan.

A district is divided into tehsils (تحصیل). A tehsils is similar to a county. Tehsils are used in all provinces except in Sindh province where the word taluka (Urdu: تعلقه) is used instead. Tehsils may contain villages or towns and cities.

Each tehsil is further divided into union councils. A union council is the smallest part of local government in Pakistan. They are sometimes made up of a few villages.

There are over 5,000 local government areas in Pakistan. Since 2001, these have been led by democratically elected local councils, each headed by a Nazim (the word means "supervisor" in Urdu, but is sometimes translated as mayor). Women have been allotted a minimum of 33% seats in these councils; there is no maximum limit to the number of women in these councils.

In the 1960s, Pakistan was simply divided into two "units" these were East Pakistan and West Pakistan. Shortly before East Pakistan became independent as Bangladesh, West Pakistan reverted to a system with four provinces. The provinces consisted of subunits called "divisions", which were further subdivided into districts, tehsils, and villages or municipalities.

In August 2000, Pervez Musharraf's local government reforms abolished the "division" as an administrative tier. A system of local government councils was established, with the first elections being held in 2001. Since then Pakistan has had greatly changed the local government system. The government had a plan to allow devolution. This plan according to the government "follows the principle of subsidiarity, whereby all functions that can be effectively performed at the local level are transferred to that level."

This means mean that decisions are made locally by people who live in the area and not in far away cities.

Other websites

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  1. Menon & Banerjea 2002, p. 5.
  2. Ring 1996, p. 288.
  3. "Dharamshala Declared Second Capital of Himachal | Hill Post". www.hillpost.in. 20 January 2017. Retrieved 2017-01-21.
  4. Kini 1974, pp. 34–35.
  5. Spate 1953, p. 200.
  6. Sati & Kumar 2004, pp. 9–10.


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