chandigarh as greater mohali area development authority gmada remained ineffective in enforcing its construction policies five private educational institutions raised their buildings illegally on 62 acres as they didnt obtain change of land use clu certificates for the samethese irregularities were highlighted by the comptroller and auditor general cag in its report tabled in the punjab assembly on thursday the defaulting institutes were rayat bahra group of institutes chandigarh university chandigarh group of colleges dashmesh khalsa college and mata sahib kaur public schoolthis not only resulted in loss of revenue on account of clu charges to the government but also endangered safety of students studying in these institutes as building bylaws were not adhered to during the construction of these buildings read the audit reportgmada attributed the reason for these lapses to shortage of staff and said these institutes had to pay very heavy penalty under the compounding policy but no documentary evidence regarding levy and recovery of penalty was produced to the audit says the cag reportthese five institutes had applied for regularisation of unauthorised buildings constructed on their campuses under punjab governments department of housing and urban development policy notified in august 2016these institutions constructed buildings on 13864 acres in violation of building rules without obtaining clu of 6223 acres three institutes namely chandigarh group of colleges chandigarh university and rayat bahra group of institutes obtained clu of 7641 acre initially before setting up these institutions whereas two remaining institutes did not obtain clu of 1331 acres before construction of buildingsnonmonitoring of real estate promotersthe cag audit has also observed that 248 promoters and 543 real estate agents whose certificates of registration were issued or renewed during 201217 for carrying out business activities had not submitted the statement of accounts duly certified by the chartered accountant on due date after the close of financial year even the records and accounts of these promoters and real estate agents were not inspected by gmadaregularisation of marriage palacesthe auditors also noticed that although the clu norms of 24 existing marriage palaces were approved between february 2013 and october 2015 their building plans were approved between november 2016 and april 2017 since the approval of building plans was delayed beyond six months of the period of clu it resulted in revenue loss of rs 3758 lakh to the state government due to reduction of rates from august 2016 and violation of terms and conditions of the cludelay in finalization of unauthorized coloniesas per august 2013 notification the mohali senior town planner stp recommended regularization of eight illegal colonies but despite stps recommendations the estate officer regulatory retained these cases even though owners of these colonies had deposited rs 1182 lakh 10 composition fee charges at the time of submission of their applications it did not issue any demand notice to the owners of these colonies to deposit the remaining charges as of october 2017 thus the very purpose of the policy was defeated besides causing a financial loss to the state exchequer