Students Parliament

He studied in D.A.V. School and Messmore Inter College of Pauri Town. He passed 10th from Pauri and went to the Government Intermediate College in Allahabad in 1937 in the Bachelor of Science programme. He received an Arts degree in 1946.^[2]

In jail

He was jailed as a part of Quit India movement from 1942 to 1946.^{[citation needed]}

Union Cabinet

In 1971, he was made State Minister for Communication in the Union Cabinet.

Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh

In 1973, he was appointed the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India. However, his tenure was short and he was forced to resign by Prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1975.

Parting of ways with the Congress

In early 1977, when Indira Gandhi lifted the state emergency and called for new elections to the Lok Sabha, Bahuguna left the ruling Congress party of Indira and formed a new group called Congress for Democracy (CFD) with Jagjivan Ram and Nandini Satpathy. The CFD joined the Janata alliance to contest the elections. After the victory of the Janata alliance, Bahuguna joined the cabinet of Janata Prime Minister Morarji Desai as the minister of chemicals and fertilizers. In 1979, he became the Finance Minister under the short lived (August - December 1979) Charan Singh administration. During his term, Indian economy went into the last recession of the 20th century. Real GDP growth fell by massive 5.2% in 1979 due to the global energy crisis. Bahuguna withdrew from the government and joined hands with Indira Gandhi in October 1979.

In the January 1980 Parliamentary elections he won from Garhwal as Indira Gandhi's Congress(I) party candidate. But, he soon left the party and resigned his seat subsequently. He won the by-election for the seat in 1982.

1984 Lok Sabha Elections

He contested against the Congress candidate, Amitabh Bachchan, in 1984 Parliamentary elections from Allahabad constituency. Bachchan won the election by approximately 1,87,000 votes. Later his wife Kamla Bahuguna also stood for by-elections from Allahabad.