First elected to parliament in 1999, Shakya served as the Minister for Women, Children and Social Welfare from 2004 to 2005 and Ministry for Industry from 2008 to 2009.
After the completion of School Leaving Certificate in 1972 she joined a Chinese language class at Basantapur with her friend Sulochana Manandhar, who is now a writer.
She started studying Chinese from which she learned about communism from her teacher Mahesh Man Shrestha, a leftist intellectual and a physician.
She was quite impressed by the life and contribution of Mao Tse-tung and read articles on struggles by women activists in China during the revolution.
With the help of her sister Sunita and her friend Sulochana, she made a plan to quit her home and devote her life for the party.
[3] Shakya and her colleagues in a Chinese language class formed a group of around sixty youths to continue to work to change their society through activities, such as visiting villages to teach the people about communism and publishing booklets on revolutions and communist leaders.
At that time the party in-charge of the CPN (ML) in Bagmati Zone was Amrit Kumar Bohara who later became her life partner.
Soon after she entered into her underground life, Shakya had to face a kind of test to prove that she was not an ordinary comfort-seeking city-dweller but could struggle for others' cause.
Her party assigned her to work in Piskar village of Sindhupalchowk district, located in the eastern side of the Kathmandu Valley.
Shakya was given various responsibilities by her party to head Muslim Ittehad Organization, Central Law Department and Parliamentary Hearing Committee.