So, it was a Rs 1.86 lakh crore - and counting - scam after all. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India's explosive observation in a report tabled in Parliament in 2012 contended that by choosing to allot coal mines, rather than hold auctions, over the years the government had helped the allottees with a "windfall gain" of Rs 1.86 lakh crore.

At that point, the government led by former prime minister Manmohan Singh, who also held the coal ministry portfolio between 2006 to 2009 when some of the allocations took place, denied and denounced the CAG report. But on the basis of a public interest litigation, the Supreme Court cancelled 204 coal blocks allotted between 1993 and 2010. SC Chief justice R.M. Lodha, along with Justices Madan B. Lokur and Kurian Joseph, noted that the allocations were arbitrary and lacked transparency. These blocks had been allotted in different states to 25 companies, including Jindal Steel & Power, Hindalco, Tata Power, Tata Steel and Essar Power.

Two years since, just 19 of the 204 coal blocks cancelled by the Supreme Court in August, 2014, have been sold for nearly Rs 1.09 lakh crore in the first round. Chhattisgarh will be the biggest beneficiary with projected revenues of Rs 47,552 crore followed by Madhya Pradesh at Rs 35,588 crore and Jharkhand at Rs 12,622 crore over the next 30 years. Bidding for the second round, with 21 more blocks on offer, began on March 4. Going by the interest in the coal blocks - and the aggressive bidding by some players, including the Aditya Birla group, Essar and Vedanta Resources - the state exchequer will go well past the Rs 1.86 lakh crore by the time all the 204 blocks are bid out. Interestingly, the CAG had originally pegged the loss to the government at Rs 10.5 lakh crore. However, it noted a figure of Rs 1.86 lakh crore when the report was finally tabled in the Parliament.

Voters punished the Manmohan Singh government for its perceived complicity in allocation and the corruption involved. The Singh-led government lost power and reduced the Congress to its lowest tally ever in Parliament.

It's not as if the government had never thought of selling blocks after price discovery. In 2004, the government had announced its intention to allocate captive coal blocks through bidding. But, clearly, the government was prevailed upon by vested interests. The then coal secretary P.C. Parakh later said his demand for open competitive bidding in coal blocks was ignored by the then coal minister Shibu Soren, despite the prime minister's approval.

Coal ministry isn't the only government department where national and public interest was sacrificed at the altar of private interest. As the recent oil and defence ministry corporate espionage investigation proves, for decades government policies were prepared in corporate headquarters, rather than in the respective ministries. Several ministers and bureaucrats had become pliant stooges of businesses. Wherever decisions went against their interest, corporates could even send the minister packing, as Jaipal Reddy found out during the UPA tenure.

For years, a happy collusion between politicians and businesses - and the various consultants and lobby groups they sponsor - has been creating the impression that there are no takers for India's vast natural resources. Whether it was telecom, coal, iron ore or oil and gas , the stranglehold of this trio ensured national interest was never a priority. Their prefabricated policies ensured the conditions were inimical to transparency and free and fair competition. That naturally prevented foreign investment, which in turn gave the trio the opportunity to propound the flawed logic that foreign investors had no interest in India's natural resources. Or, that the nation was over-pricing its natural resources.

What broke the shackles was the SC's tough stance through telecom and coal licence cancellations . It may have invited derision from business as being regressive, but they have also put all such perpetrators on notice.

Telecom spectrum auctions opened the floodgates of transparency and it appears there's no looking back from here. If the auction turned out to be a windfall for the government, coal block auction clearly is the icing on the cake. Hopefully, with this, the last bastion of politico-business nexus that kept valuable national natural resources out of the radar of price discovery has been broken.