The radiative induction of the CPT and Lorentz violating Chern-Simons (CS) term is reassessed. The massless and massive models are studied. Special attention is given to the preservation of gauge symmetry at higher orders in the background vector $b_mu$ when radiative corrections are considered. Both the study of the odd and even parity sectors of the complete vacuum polarization tensor at one-loop order and a non-perturbative analysis show that this symmetry must be preserved by the quantum corrections. As a complement we obtain that transversality of the polarization tensor does not fix the value of the coefficient of the induced CS term.