Angular + IE : State.go on button click not working

Question

We are developing an angular app and are having trouble with IE / Edge. We do realize that angular dropped support for older IE versions, but we are fine with that. Anyway, even in IE9+ and Edge we can't make $state.go work. Nothing happens when it's triggered.

So i have html like this

 <md-button ng-disabled="!form.$valid" type="submit" class="md-primary" ng-click="controller.action()">
                    Action
                </md-button>

In controller:

     function action(){ 
    alert("this alert does work in IE!");
//Do something ( This works as well ) 
    $state.go("state");}

So clearly there is an issue with the UI Router which looks pretty standard

(function () {
angular
    .module('module')
    .config(routeConfig);

routeConfig.$inject = ['$stateProvider', '$urlRouterProvider'];
function routeConfig($stateProvider, $urlRouterProvider) {
    $urlRouterProvider.otherwise('/state');
    $stateProvider
        .state('state', {
            url: '/state',
            template: '<div></div>'
        })
...

Angular Version is 1.5.3.