Vandana Kataria
A forward from Haridwar who has played for India in two Olympics, including the fourth-placed team at Tokyo 2020, honoured with the Padma Shri in 2022.
Vandana Kataria is a hockey player who plays as a forward for the Indian women’s team. She was named for the Padma Shri in 2022 in the field of sports, from Uttarakhand [1].
From Roshnabad
Kataria was born on 15 April 1992 in Roshnabad, Haridwar, into a middle-class family of four brothers and four sisters [2]. Her father, Nahar Singh, worked as a master technician at BHEL in Haridwar, and her mother is Soran Devi [2]. She made her junior international debut in 2006 [2].
A decade with India
She rose to prominence at the 2013 Junior World Cup in Mönchengladbach, Germany, where she was India’s top scorer with five goals and the team won bronze [2]. With the senior team she won bronze at the 2014 Asian Games in Incheon and silver at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, and played at the Commonwealth Games in 2014 and 2018 [2]. She played at the Rio 2016 Olympics and at Tokyo 2020, where India finished fourth [2].
She has received the Arjuna Award and, in 2021, Uttarakhand’s Teelu Rauteli award and Uttar Pradesh’s Rani Laxmibai award [2].
Sources
- [1] Padma Awards 2022: list of awardees — Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India. Accessed 24 October 2026.
- [2] Padma Awards 2022: citation for Vandana Kataria — Padma Awards, Government of India. Accessed 24 October 2026.
Last updated . First draft prepared with AI assistance; reviewed and fact-checked by a person before publishing. Report a correction
