How Tamil Nadu government turned the tables on ED

An eight kilometre chase down the Madurai-Dindigul highway. Officials of the Tamil Nadu Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) were behind a man zooming ahead in a TATA Altroz car. When the man was finally captured, it turned out to be Ankit Tiwari, an officer of the Union government's dreaded Enforcement Directorate. Ankit’s arrest on December 1, a hostile raid on the ED office, and the legal battle that followed has pitted the Tamil Nadu government, headed by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s M K Stalin, against the Union government’s might.

States ruled by parties opposed to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have to often fight not just the regime, but also its extended arms such as the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Income Tax department, and the Enforcement Directorate. This fight became quite literal in West Bengal, where a mob attacked an ED team with sticks and machetes when they tried to raid the house of Trinamool Congress leader Shahjahan Sheik. Tamil Nadu, on the other hand, has used a more surgical approach.