Guwahati, Sept. 16: The Congress today lost its government in Arunachal Pradesh for the second time this year as all but one of its 44 legislators, led by chief minister Pema Khandu, crossed over to a regional party that quickly allied with a BJP-led bloc.

The Congress is now left with only Nabam Tuki, whom the party had replaced with Khandu as chief minister in July this year to check a rebellion.

Khandu, 37, the son of the late Congress chief minister Dorjee Khandu who died in a helicopter crash, and his colleagues joined the People's Party of Arunachal (PPA) this morning.

The PPA will be a part of the North East Democratic Alliance (Neda), a BJP-led political front which was formed in Guwahati in May with the aim of uniting non-Congress parties in the Northeast.

In Delhi, Congress communication chief Randeep Surjewala said: "The mandate was for the Congress, the legislators had not voted for the BJP ideology. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah are the architects of this subversion."

The BJP projected itself and the Centre as a passive bystander and blamed internal dissidence in the Congress for the political turmoil in the frontier state.

Khandu, who met the Speaker with 42 MLAs in the Assembly, told reporters in Itanagar that he took the step for the state's development in view of the "very difficult financial position" his government had inherited.

The effective strength of the Arunachal Assembly is 57 after the resignation of two MLAs and the demise of Kalikho Pul, who was briefly anointed chief minister with the aid of the BJP but was ousted by a court order. Pul's body was later found hanging from a ceiling fan in the chief minister's house.

Himanta Biswa Sarma, a senior cabinet minister in the BJP-led government in Assam and Neda convener, told a television channel that Khandu had, during a recent visit to New Delhi, sought appointments from both Prime Minister Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

"Khandu told me Modi gave him appointment on a Sunday despite being a holiday while Rahul Gandhi gave him an appointment on Tuesday despite Khandu being a chief minister from his own party! You can see for yourself the difference and why there is resentment against Rahul's leadership," he said.

Privately, BJP sources in New Delhi said the germ of a larger project to have a second shot at destabilising the Congress government was sown when Khandu came complaining about funds crunch in the state treasury.

Initially cold, the BJP's strategists figured out that a cash-starved government would find it difficult to survive for too long in a state that was almost entirely dependent on the Centre to bail it out of a financial crisis.

Last week, when BJP president Shah and general secretary in-charge of the Northeast Ram Madhav were in Imphal for a state party meeting, they discussed the situation in Arunachal.

Sarma was sounded out. Sarma, who had endeavoured to execute Shah's blueprint for a larger coalition of the non-Congress forces in the Northeast through Neda, warmed up to the idea of exploring the prospects of an alternative government in Itanagar, the sources said.

Shah and Madhav decided to keep themselves out of the main frame.