Polymer anchored oxovanadium catalyst was synthesized and characterized. The solid catalyst was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). Its catalytic activity was evaluated for the oxidation of various alkenes, sulfides and aromatic alcohols with 30% H2O2 under mild reaction conditions. This catalyst was also effective for the oxidative bromination reaction of organic substrates with 80-100% selectivity of mono substituted products with H2O2/KBr at room temperature. The above reactions require minimum amount of H2O2, short time period and most importantly all the above reactions occur in aqueous medium. The developed catalyst can be facilely recovered and reused six times without significant decrease in activity and selectivity. This result confirms that the polymer anchored complex was not leached during the reaction, suggesting the true heterogeneous nature of the catalyst. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.