Khulna Division

Khulna Division (Bengali: খুলনা বিভাগ, Khulnā bibhāg) is one of eight administrative divisions of Bangladesh, superior to districts and named after their respective largest city. It covers an area of 22,273.21 km². It is located in the southwest of the country. The population of the division is about 17 million inhabitants. The administrative capital is the eponymous city of Khulna.

Khulna Division borders the Rajshahi administrative unit to the north, Dhaka and Barishal to the east, the Bay of Bengal to the south, and the Indian state of West Bengal to the west.

The administrative unit is composed of ten districts and has 28 city governments and numerous local sub-government categories. The districts are: Bagerhat, Chuadanga, Jessore, Jhenaidah, Khulna, Kushtia, Magura, Meherpur, Narail and Satkhira.

Within the administrative unit, in the districts of Satkhira, Bagerhat and Khulna, are the Sundarbans, the delta area of the Ganges (Padma in Bangladesh) and Brahmaputra (Jamuna in Bangladesh).

When British India was partitioned in 1947, India was given the Muslim-majority West Bengal district of Murshidabad, in deviation from the other partition ideology, because of the existence here of an important tributary of the Ganges to the river Hugli, which is important for the navigability of the river and thus indirectly for the port of Kolkata. As compensation, the then district of Khulna, though Hindu-majority, was made part of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

Population development