He said any building that has been built without approval from Rajuk is illegal.

According to Rajuk sources, there are many organisations, which defy the laws on construction and keep constructing without permission. DU, Dhaka City Corporation and Public Works Department are among these institutions.

The Rajuk move comes following a report published in Star City on Sunday on DU's latest venture to build a 10-storey building without seeking permission from Rajuk.

"If they [DU authorities] build any building without permission from Rajuk then first we will serve them a notice and then we will demolish the construction," said Haroon.

Around 15 to 20 big trees were chopped down on last Tuesday on the green patch near Science Annex Building of DU to start the construction involving Tk 15 crore which will be borne by a trust.

Over the years crores of taka has been spent on similar unauthorised constructions on the DU campus that wiped out valuable collection of trees.

Leading architects of the country said that by erecting buildings without approval DU is violating the Building Construction Act 2006, which is punishable by seven and a half years of prison terms.

DU should have a phase-wise master plan, where buildings and their heights will be specified, to stop its becoming a concrete jungle. The construction sites and extensions will have to be under the plan, they said.

The architects said DU authorities are eager to start the construction of the 10-storey building as soon as possible as the project cost is to be borne by a trust.

A bizarre building for Applied Physics Department was built within the compound of Curzon Hall destroying its aesthetic beauty, said one of the architects.

A high official of the Department of Architecture said that DU engineering section is operating without any qualified engineers. Therefore in the last 50 years no fine building was erected and the old ones were destroyed in the name of extension.

"Pedestrian walkways and green spaces have disappeared in the process of haphazard extension," he said.

Till now, DU has ignored all media reports on its illegal construction and defiantly continued constructing new buildings and defacing old ones.

Among a few examples, the NIPA [National Institute for Public Administration] building, was subjected to erratic painting. The lift of the Lecture Theatre building was turned into an office.

The DU authorities also took an attempt to build a tower for a private mobile company on the roof of the Central Library without considering its architectural beauty, which is now apparently postponed following newspaper reports.

In the last 86 years DU authorities have failed to draft a master plan and took up construction projects on piecemeal basis to eat up its pristine campus. Construction and extension of buildings went on haphazardly without taking into consideration any aesthetic value of the campus.

Extension of Shahidullah Hall is an 'ugly' structure without any architectural beauty and consistence with the main building, said a senior architect.

The DU authorities said they did not seek permission from Rajuk and did not need it because DU is an old institution while Rajuk is a new one. They considered DU a 'state within a state' and so are competent to construct any building on their 'own' space.

SMA Faiz, vice chancellor, DU, reportedly said that from now on they will go up vertically and replace old buildings with new ones so that no more open spaces are used up. The progress of making a master plan for DU is 'under process', he said.

DU authorities are now planning another 10-storey building for the social science faculty on the open space on the eastern side of Madhur Canteen.