Several industries including textile, dye manufacturing industries, paper and pulp industries discharge colored wastewater. The majority of synthetic dyes is composed of toxic azo compounds. Eradication of toxic azo dyes, organic pollutants, radioactive materials from the global ecosystem has received remarkable attention due to their detrimental effects on human health and ecosystem. Nanotechnology-based applications on catalytic degradation of contaminants from aqueous ecosystem have evolved as a major topic of research in the scientific community, to develop a cost-effective and energy-effective strategy. In this context, nanomaterials have gained much attention because of its unique physico-chemical properties. Herein, catechol-generated palladium nanoparticles (PdNPs) have been utilized for the selective removal of congo red dye from wastewater. In this study, Palladium nanocatalyst (4 μg/ml) developed earlier by our group, was screened for degradation of dyes of different nature. The newly developed nanocatalyst was found to be effective against anionic dyes. Among the anaionic dyes, congo red was selected for degdradation study in detail. Complete degradation of congo red dye (CR) (150 μM) is found to happen within 10 min. Besides catalytic degradation, the efficiency of the recycled catalyst was evaluated, which exhibits 60 % efficiency even after the 3rd cycle. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS) characterization of the degraded products reveals the formation of benzidine, indicating the reductive cleavage of azo linkage of the dye.In summary, the results highlight the potential development of a nanocatalyst for the selective and efficient removal of congo red, suggesting a simple,cost-effective, and reusable approach to prevent industrial pollutant in aqueous ecosystem.