I brought the thing to the notice of my superiors.
And well, we have now MySQL version 5.6 where there is a simple and easy way to implement TRY-CATCH
scenario. And now, I am using the following code in all my stored procedures.
DECLARE EXIT HANDLER FOR SQLEXCEPTION BEGIN
ROLLBACK;
GET DIAGNOSTICS CONDITION 1
strErrorMessage = MESSAGE_TEXT;
SET intException = 53300;
END;