CMDA sources said the State exchequer was losing revenue worth several crores due to  this. As per records, there are 176 colleges within Chennai Metropolitan Area. Of these, 65 are engineering colleges, 41 are polytechnic colleges, 46 arts and science colleges and 24 teachers education colleges. Only few of the colleges are following the rules and have statutory plans, while a majority do not have any statutory approvals.

Sources said many of the institutions applied under the 1999 regularisation scheme but their applications were rejected as they did not furnish proper documents about the plans. It was on 2012, CMDA issued bulk notices to the educational institutions calling for approved plan within 15 days. Significantly, barring a few, none of the institutions came forward to apply for approval or tried to regularize their building under Section 113c, which was passed in February 2013. Sources confided that many educational institutions may not fulfil the criteria of section 113C as they were built in farm lands.

Interestingly, CMDA is blamed for not following up on the issue. “Only a notice giving 15 days deadline for submitting approved plans was given. It was not followed by lock and seal notice as is being done to commercial buildings,” sources said.

M G Deivasahayam, Managing Trustee of the Chennai-based Citizens Alliance for Sustainable Living (SUSTAIN) and a former member of the monitoring Committee says  despite the notices to the institutions, they were still constructing buildings. “All educational institutions should be treated on par with commercial establishments as most of them are commercial in nature. They should not be given special privileges,” he says, adding that building laws are meant to be implemented and CMDA should take punitive action against the violators.

He said due to lack of implementation of laws, people were emboldened to buy even the unapproved buildings and it was not a good sign.