The Chhattisgarh government on Wednesday withdrew its plea from the Supreme Court challenging the ground of jurisdiction of the Enforcement Directorate's action against state government officials in a money laundering case.
The lodged in 2022 stems from an FIR registered on a complaint by the Income Tax Department over allegations of illegal collection of levy on coal as well as attempts to influence public servants through corrupt means in Chhattisgarh.
The ED claimed a “massive scam” took place between 2019 and 2021 in coal transportation in Chhattisgarh as part of which a “cartel” of politicians, officers and others allegedly ran a parallel system of extorting illegal levy.
In its plea, the Chhattisgarh government claimed the ED, on the basis of the FIR lodged in Bengaluru, registered an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) in Raipur on September 29, 2022 and started an investigation against state government officials.
Chhattisgarh’s standing counsel Sumeer Sodhi told justices Sanjiv Khanna and SVN Bhatti on Wednesday that he has instructions to withdraw the plea.
The Bench allowed the state government to withdraw the petition and recorded Sodhi's submission.
The petition prayed the court to declare the ED's action illegal, without jurisdiction and unconstitutional.
The Chhattisgarh government, apart from seeking quashing of the ECIR, also urged the apex court to declare all subsequent actions by the ED with regard to the probe arbitrary and unconstitutional as they interfered with the functions of the state police.
The Chhattisgarh government alleged that the investigation by the ED resulted in indiscriminate surveys and raids at various departments and offices of the state government and arrest of state officials.
The state government earlier this year filed a suit challenging the constitutional validity of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), alleging that central agencies were being misused to "intimidate, harass and disturb" the normal functioning of the non-BJP state governments.
