MADURAI: The Madurai bench of the Madras high court on Monday passed an interim order directing the state government to permit companies owned by granite baron P Palanisamy to do business in districts where no criminal cases were registered against the firms.

Justice T Raja gave the direction on a petition filed by P Senthilkumar, son of Palanisamy and partner of PRP Granites and PRP Exports. The court also directed the government to file a counter in two weeks, if there were any objections.

The petitioner had prayed the court to allow his firms to mine granites in other districts and export them.

Special government pleader B Pugalendi vehemently opposed the petitioner's plea. He said in all, 52 cases were registered against the petitioner's firms.

Neither the collector nor officials of geology and mining departments were added as party to the case. The petitioner had not disclosed the names of places where his firms had granite quarry business. If he did so, the government would have verified the same in a short period, he said.

When the petitioner took the case to the Supreme Court, it dismissed his petition considering the larger public interest, Pugalendi said. Hence, the petitioner's prayer should not be entertained, the court was told.

The government pleader also told the court that there were possibilities of granite blocks being smuggled from Madurai to other districts, if the petitioner was allowed to do business.

To this, the judge said, "If a person runs four shops in different places and commits a wrongful activity in one of the shops, you would not prevent him from doing business in his other shops."

The judge directed the government to permit the petitioner's firms to do business in other districts.