Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has slammed the findings of the CAG, who released a report stating that the 'Coalgate' scam could be India's biggest ever. According to the report, coal blocks were allotted to private firms without competitive bidding that resulted in the loss of nearly Rs 1.86 lakh crores to the exchequer! Here are some other scams that resulted in mindboggling losses...

Adarsh Society: Flats in a 31-storey building in an upmarket area of Mumbai that was meant to be reserved for Kargil war heroes and widows, were given out to the highest bidders, including members of the then Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan's family. Other allottees included former Union environment minister Suresh Prabhu, Nationalist Congress Party MLC Jitendra Avhad, Congress leader Kanhaiyalal Gidwani and his two sons and some serving bureaucrats. The flats were allotted at throwaway prices, and the information was unearthed by RTI activists. The scam led to the resignation of Chavan

One of the most costliests scam to ever rock the government, the 2G scam is valued at Rs 1.76 lakh crore. Licenses for the 2G spectrum were auctioned off at far lower prices than the market rates and were then resold to other operators for profits.

CWG mess: The organising committee for the Commonwealth Games managed to siphon off Rs 8000 crore before they were pulled up. Suresh Kalmadi, the committee chairman, was arrested and suspended by the Congress party, but as the BJP's Arun Jaitly rightly stated, the scam was too big "for the buck to stop at one person".

IPL auction: Even though the IPL is managed by the privately-run BCCI, the men who hold the reins of power in the cricket body are none other than politicians themselves. Shashi Tharoor, Sharad Pawar's daughter Supriya Sule and even aviation minister Praful Patel, found themselves named in the IPL auction scam, which alleged that these politicians had backed teams for monetary gains. The IPL row even led to the resignation of Tharoor as External Affairs minister.

Stamp paper scam: A counterfeiter named Abdul Karim Telgi was arrested in November 2001 after police in Bangalore seized fake stamp paper valued at Rs 9.92 crore. He continued to mint money while in custody thanks to the huge empire he had built over the years with the help of police officers and politicians. Several officers in the Maharashtra Police force were suspended during the course of the investigation of the Rs 500 crore con job.

Bihar flood relief scam: After floods ravaged the homes of thousands in Bihar in 2004, a young IAS officer Gautam Goswami even found mention in Time magazine for his outstanding work in providing relief to victims. However investigations later revealed that while records show that a sum of Rs 17.18 crore had been paid to a corporation to provide amenities, material worth only a few lakhs was finally distributed. Goswami came under the scanner and several others were also arrested.

Scorpene submarine scam: In a scandal not unlike the infamous Bofors scam, the government once again came under the scanner after it was alleged that French company Thales had paid bribes to government decision-makers to facilitate a Rs 19,000 crore deal for the procurement of six Scorpene submarines. The deal was okayed by the then-defence minister Pranab Mukherjee in 2005, and it is believed that middlemen received hefty kickbacks in the matter.