Mohan Katarki, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court.
I remember having met Shri. Mohan Shantanagoudar, for the first time at the porch of UCL, Dharwad. I was joining and he was leaving after completing the course to practice. The short introduction matured into good friendship in the later years when I joined the bar. However, we hardly had chance to meet after he became the judge of HC and later SC. But, whenever we met in social gatherings, he would affectionately talk in Mumbai Karnataka diction that too in the admirable singular.
Shri. Mohan Shantangoudar was born in a well to do landed family. However, as a son of a successful lawyer, he was quite urbanised in his outlook. His father donned a black cap and wore white dhoti with long shirt topped by a bandh gala black coat – a typical dress of a district court lawyer of bygone days in Karnataka and Maharashtra. Shantangoudar grew up in the idyllic setting of Dharwad and remained, till the end, a Dharwad boy. He had flair for mimicry.
Shantangoudar had few more years to retire from the SC after joining the grand collegium to recruit judges of HCs and SC. During his short stay in the SC, he earned the goodwill of the bar as a gentleman. He had started presiding over the bench and appeared poising for
meaningful contribution to the jurisprudence with his vast litigation experience. He didn’t allow being browbeaten. When he was part of the bench to hear inter State matter, senior counsel sought his recusal on the ground that he comes from Karnataka. He looked at him and
said smilingly – I was about to recuse myself but you didn’t wait for me to talk … if you insist, I will not recuse …!!!
There are several judgements to his credit. In Nandan Biomatrix he described figuratively the plight of farmers at the hands of corporate seed companies. He upheld rights of Nurses to inhouse hostel in Lilavati case. Shantangoudar didn’t find much time to be noticed in Supreme Court. He created a flutter within a year by erudite dissent in Indore Development Case which dealt with Section 24 of the new land acquisition law.
The untimely death of Shantangoudar is a great loss to legal fraternity, Dharwadians and family. My heartfelt condolences and prayers.
Mohan Katarki
Senior Advocate
Supreme Court of India
New Delhi
April 25, 202
Daksha Legal 