Cotton fabric has been made electro‐conductive by electroless deposition of silver from its salt solution. Preparation process involved radical graft polymerization of glycidyl methacrylate monomer on plain woven cotton fabric using 10 kGy dose of electron beam irradiation, and then hydrazination of the epoxy ring of the monomer to introduce reducing agents into the fibre chemical structure. These reducing agents are sites for metal particle deposition. The chemical modifications were characterized by infrared spectroscopic studies. From X‐ray diffraction pattern analysis, the average size of these deposited silver metallic particles is 41 nm. These are observed as heterogeneous deposition on the fibre surface in scanning electron images. From thermogravimetric analysis, around 7.5% of the metal plated fabric weight is silver. The deposited silver nanoparticles make a conductive pathway through contact network, and this network brings a drop in average value of surface resistivity of the cotton fabric from 109 Ω/sq to 3.63 Ω/sq for the metallised fabric. Such prepared electro‐conductive fabric showed very good wash durability of electrical conductivity up to 15 washing cycles when carried out as per ISO‐105‐C10:2006 (E) test no. A (1) standard, indicating firm adherence of silver nanoparticles to the fabric surface. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017, 134, 44576.