ED search and seizure at TASMAC: T.N. govt. files amendment petition before Madras HC

The Tamil Nadu government has amended its prayer in a writ petition filed before the Madras High Court against the search and seizure operation carried out by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) at the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) headquarters in Chennai between March 6 and March 8, 2025.

The Tamil Nadu government has amended its prayer in a writ petition filed before the Madras High Court against the search and seizure operation carried out by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) at the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) headquarters in Chennai between March 6 and March 8, 2025.

The State government’s amendment petition, along with two other individual writ petitions filed by TASMAC to declare the entire search and seizure operation illegal and to injunct the ED from harassing its staff, has been listed for hearing before a Division Bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and K. Rajasekar on Tuesday (April 1, 2025).

The government had chosen to amend its prayer after a Bench of Justices M.S. Ramesh and N. Senthilkumar on March 20, 2025, wondered how an omnibus order could be issued, preventing the ED from conducting search and seizure operations in any money laundering case in Tamil Nadu without the State government’s consent.

In its plea for amendment of the prayer, the government has now urged the court to read down/read into the expression ‘person’ defined under Section 2(1)(s) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) of 2002 and thereby hold that the term would not include any authority, regulator, or officer of either the Central government or the State government.

The amendment petition, filed jointly by the State government and TASMAC, also sought a declaration that the obligation on the part of the officers of any State government, under the PMLA, would be only to the extent of assisting the ED authorities in the enforcement of the provisions of the law.

The government further sought a direction to the ED to call upon only those officers who had been authorised and notified under Section 54 of the PMLA to assist them in the enforcement of the Act.

The Tamil Nadu government also insisted on issuing a direction to the ED to request such assistance from the State government or its officers only under Section 54 (the obligation of officers to assist in an inquiry) and not under Sections 17 (power conferred on ED to conduct search and seizure operations) or 50 (power to summon individuals, order production of records and record statements) of the PMLA.