Confocal laser scanning microscope (clsm) has established itself now as an indispensable tool for biomedical and biomolecular research. clsm in conjunction with fluorescent dyes have provided tremendous impetus to the field of biomolecular imaging. confocal microscopy has been successfully employed to image and investigate several biological systems such as membranes, tissues and cells. in spite of this, commercial clsm are still not affordable to many laboratories in india and has limitations in terms of adaptability to different experimental situations. here we report on our attempts to develop a cost effective clsm which can easily be modified according to user specifications and requirements. the microscope can function in fluorescent mode as well as reflectance mode. while a commercial confocal microscope will cost around rs. 1 crore, we could setup the microscope for around rs. 12 lakhs. an inverted microscope, data acquisition card, laser and optics available in the laboratory are used in construction of clsm. x-y galvanometric mirror scanner working at 512 hz and 2 hz respectively was used to construct images at the rate of 4 frames per second. reflectance or fluorescence signal is coupled to a photomultiplier tube through an optical fiber which acts as the confocal aperture. for scanning, data acquisition and image reconstruction we use national instruments daq card and home-written labview software. initial calibration of clsm was done with different standard samples such as microparticles of 5 µm, 10 µm and 1 µm polystyrene beads and pollen grain samples for calibration of the microscope setup.