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.