CBSE topper Anisha Ghosh and twin sister shine with disciplined study routine
Telegraph | 15 May 2026
When Anisha Ghosh first saw her Board result on a smartphone, she thought there was a glitch and the full marks in each paper got listed by mistake. “I was looking for my marks.” It was only when her twin sister Anishka’s result was checked, and her score was found to be four marks less, that realisation dawned on her. She had scored full marks in her Class X Board examination.
Anisha, a student of Bhavan’s Gangabux Kanoria Vidyamandir (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan), has topped CBSE (jointly) across the country.
The family, which resides in Kalindi, near Lake Town, was at Kankurgachhi Yogadyan when the results came out. “We went to touch Mahararaj’s feet after seeing the results. Both had expected over 99 per cent. But Anishka was upset to have got 97 in English and Maharaj consoled her. He gifted prasadi garland and chocolate to both of them,” said father Avijit Ghosh.
Anisha had opted for English, Bengali, mathematics, science, social science and Artificial Intelligence. The only subject where she got less than full marks — 97 — was Bengali. But that did not count in the best of five aggregate.
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It is tough to imagine how close the identical twins are without meeting them. Possibly that is why the school placed them in different sections of the same class. “They have no private tutors and study as a team ever since they were in Class VI. Their pattern of writing and even handwriting are similar. Being in different sections in the same class gave them a chance to be taught by different sets of teachers,” said mother Poulami Ghosh, who used to prepare their lesson plan before she would leave for her Sector V office.
“We shared each other’s classnotes,” Anisha said. But what raises eyebrows is the way they studied. “They need pin-drop silence. So the door to their room would be shut and both would read the textbook aloud. Somehow, the sound of one’s voice does not bother the other. Du kaney angul diye chechiye pore,” said their father.
“We study the same page and focus completely on that. But once the page is over, I check if she has finished and wait till she is ready to turn over to the next,” Anisha said. “Even when we are doing sums, she would wait for me to catch up if I have done one or two sums less within the planned time,” Anishka added.
Their mother said that she had tried to make the two sisters study different subjects at a time but they refused. Herself a batch topper in electrical engineering in BE College, Poulami encouraged them to be regular in their studies and not fall behind. She taught them Bengali, English and AI and had got their father, also an engineer, to help them with physics and mathematics. “He also planned when they would solve Test papers. They studied biology on their own.”
“There is no need to study all day. What matters is consistency,” Avijit agreed.
Their routine for three months before the examination was to wake up around 6am and sit down to study at 7am. They took a half-hour breakfast break at 9am and solved sample papers from 9.30am. There was another half hour break for lunch after which they solved one more paper. There was an afternoon break from 4.30 to 6pm. There was no studying beyond 10pm.
They enrolled in a private institute’s online foundation course. “Since the material included some advanced concepts, we used it for our own guidance to teach them,” Avijit said.
They were serious about the language papers too. “Ma never let us use notes and asked us to be creative.
So the answers to the same question would be different every time we wrote it,” Anisha said.
The family also remembers their English teacher in school, “Shubhechchha ma’am”. “Over the last three months, they used to select three or four questions per chapter and write out the answers. I used to take them to school for her to check,” Avijit recalled.
Work & play
“There was no break in their drawing, music or dance classes even through the study leave. Since we could not enrol them in sports for lack of any facility nearby, I was keen on dance as that was the only form of physical activity for them,” Poulami said.
“We used to train in kathak earlier but once we reached higher classes, which needed more practice, our teacher suggested a shift to Bharatanatyam,” Anisha added. Their music and painting teachers came home while dance classes were 10 minutes away.
The T20 World Cup was on during their exams. “We followed the India matches even then. Only during the South Africa match, which happened the night before our Bengali exam, Baba said: “Dekhar dorkar nei, India harchhe,” said Anisha, a Shubman Gill fan, who is now rooting for the Gill-led Gujarat Titans in the ongoing IPL.
There has been no celebration. The girls plunged headlong into Class XI studies, first in online classes through the election season, and now at home during the summer vacation. Former MLA Sujit Bose had come home with flowers but there has been no prize from parents. “This is just the start of their life. They have a lot left to achieve,” the parents said.
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