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When they got admission in Dharwad's Karnataka College in 2005, the Pujar twins - Laxman and Ramanna, from Gadag - survived on jowar roti and chilli powder for two months. When they ran out of rotis, a shared ten-rupee lunch was all they had the whole day. 

The hard work is paying off. Laxman Pujar, who graduated from KIMS, Hubballi, has topped the ST (Scheduled Tribe) category to bag a postgraduate seat in the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi. Ramanna, who took up engineering, is gearing up to crack the UPSC exam. 

Laxman ranks 308 in the general category. About 60,000 students took the test held on November 9. Poverty and lack of medical facilities in his taluk motivated him to take up medicine, said Laxman of Shirol village in Mundargi taluk, Gadag district. 

"My father, a lineman with Hescom, had to run a family of five children. We faced severe financial crunch during school days. After completing PU, my brother Ramanna dropped medicine in favour of engineering due to fund shortage. However, I joined KIMS," he said. 

Vidyaposhaka, an NGO in Dharwad, supported the twins during their PU days with scholarship and textbooks."My mother would arrange Rs 10 a month for tuitions till Class IV," he said. Halappa and Paravva, the beaming parents, say the twins have been excelling in studies since school days. "They joined Morarji Desai Residential School after Class 5. We're proud that their talent fetched them scholarships," they said. 

For the test, Laxman saved a huge part of the Rs 15,000 monthly stipend that he got during MBBS internship and trained in Kochi as it was cheaper than in Bengaluru. "I used to study 14-18 hours a day," he said.As Laxman is set to leave for Delhi, Ramanna in Bengaluru is preparing for the UPSC Mains to join the administrative service.