On Wednesday, 30th April, 2014, members of Sydney’s Indian community, particularly from Karnataka, met and interacted with Former Chief Minister of Karnataka, The Hon Jagadish Shettar, at the home of Hemanth Raju in Glenfield, NSW. 
Hemanth is the current President of Basava Samithi, Sydney.
Approx 50 people were present. Prominent among them were Hemanth Raju, Paramesh Halaradhya, Satish Bhadranna, Mallikarjun Ramanahalli and Chidananda Puttarevanna.
Mr Shettar was in Australia to take part in “6th International Sharana Samskriti Sammelana” meeting in Perth recently. He visited Sydney after this meeting, before travelling to Melbourne and NZ.
He has a vast record of public service in Karnataka. He was a lawyer by profession, before entering Karnataka Assembly in 1994. His family members and he has been long term Jan Sangh/BJP members/supporters. He was an active leader of Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) during his student days. He has also held the position of Karnataka BJP President at one stage.
He served as Speaker of the Assembly in 2008-9, Minister in various Karnataka Govts at various times, and was the Chief Minister from 2012 to 2013. Currently, he is the Leader of Opposition in the assembly.
He is a senior leader of BJP, with a lot of influence, following and support in Karnataka.
Our interaction with him included topics of Indian Governance, Karnataka Politics and Indian 
election. He felt that a minimum of 20 MPs from Karnataka will be from BJP. He was confident that NDA (National Democratic Alliance) will form the next Govt at the centre and Mr Narendra Modi will be the next Prime Minister of India.
We enjoyed home-cooked and typical Kannada food, prepared by various members of the community.
We were very impressed with his down to earth nature and simplicity. We enjoyed his sense of humour.
It was indeed a great pleasure to meet Mr Jagadish Shettar!
Dr Yadu Singh/Sydney/2nd May 2014
Yadu Singh's Blog 