The present invention relates to detection of pathogenic mycobacteria in clinical specimens such as sputum, cerebrospinal fluid, gastric lavage and tissue biopsies etc., wherein the novel stretch of DNA that lies in the intergenic region between methyl mycolic acid synthase genes mmaA1 and mmaA2 and the flanking region in mmaA1 and mmaA2 genes and is the invention uses a pair of designed oligonucleotide primers that specifically amplifies the target DNA from the clinical specimens.