The present invention relates to cloning, expression in E coli and purification of mycobacterial antigens. The invention also in particular relates to expression and purification of two important mycobacterial proteins with serodiagnostic potential, namely, 38-kDa and Mtb81 antigens, in monomeric form which involves using a T7 promoter based expression vector under conditions of regulated and slow expression followed by 3-step column chromatography procedure to obtain highly purified proteins with enhanced yields of two proteins. The invention further relates to use of purified proteins in detecting antibodies in sera of tuberculosis patients .