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The environment ministry is stepping up its monitoring at the state level with four new regional offices at Chennai, Dehradun, Nagpur and Ranchi to add to its existing five. Officials at these offices, apart from monitoring and evaluating schemes, will inspect sites where forest land is being diverted for industrial use, before forest clearance is granted. The new offices are being set up to comply with the Supreme Court’s 2011 order in the so-called Lafarge case, and to facilitate more frequent inspections and in-depth scrutiny and appraisal of the proposals. The expenditure finance committee decided to set up the new offices in a meeting on March 04 2013.