Abstract: Mesoporous silica (SBA-15) synthesized hydrothermally followed by calcination and then functionalization with 3-(trimethoxysilyl)-1-propanethiol through surface grafting. The thiol moiety of the grafted ligand is utilized for uniform anchoring the cadmium into the channels of the material. The synthesised material was subjected for its photo catalytic applications after characterization through standard characterization protocol. The synthesised SAB-15, ligand modified SBA-15-S and Cd loaded SAB-15-CdS were characterized through standard characterization protocol like powder XRD, FT-IR, UV-DRS, MAS NMR, N2 sorption, FE-SEM, HR-TEM and TG-DTA studies. After successful characterization the screening of the catalyst was carried out on a model reaction involving photo catalytic cleavage of α-O-4 aryl ether linkage present in benzyl phenyl ether, which is an important lignin model compound. The catalyst exhibited good efficiency along with the selectivity for desired monoaromatic platform chemicals. The synthesized catalyst was also carried out for the photo catalytic depolymerization of alkali lignin at the optimized reaction conditions which further showed the promising results for getting value added chemicals from lignin. The reaction products were characterized by using Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) techniques.