The Payment of Wages Authority has jurisdiction to determine disputes as to the amount payable, including disputes as to the number of days or hours for which the employee has actually worked, in order to determine whether wages have been delayed.

1. This petition raises a very important interesting question as to the jurisdiction of the Payment of Wages Authority. The petitioner before us is the Secretary of the Wollen Mill Kamgar Union the second Opponents are the Raymond Woollen Mills, Ltd. It appears that 48 watchmen employed by the second opponents applied for recovering delayed wages to the Payment of Wages Authority, Their case was that they worked as watchmen in three shifts and each of these three shifts was for fifteen days; and in these shifts they were made to work for more than eight hours a day and they were, therefore entitled to overtime wages. The second opponents inter alia contended that in point of fact no over-time work was done by any of the watchmen. The Payment of Wages Authority, being the Joint Civil Judge at Thana, held that he had no jurisdiction to determine this disputed question of fact and, therefore, dismissed the application. It is this order of the Payment of Wages Authority that is challenged on this petition on the ground that the Authority, failed to exercise jurisdiction which it possessed having taken a wrong view of its own jurisdiction; and the question that has been debated before us is whether the Payment of Wages Authority had or had not jurisdiction to decide whether the watchmen had in fact worked over-time for the purpose of determining whether their wages for over-time work had been delayed.

2. Now, in the first instance, it would be useful to get rid of the ground on which the Payment of Wages Authority appears to have proceeded; and that ground is that under Section 15 of the Payment of Wages Act the Authority can hear and decide all claims arising out of delay in payment of wages or deductions from wages which are admitted and not wages which are disputed. Apparently, the proposition is supposed to have been laid down by a Division Bench of this Court in Sarin v Patil, 53 Bom LR 674 : (AIR 1951 Bom 423) (A). I was a party to that decision and I take my full share of responsibility for everything that is found in the judgment which was delivered by my Lord the Chief Justice. It is true that in the course of that judgment at page 677 (of Bom LR) : (at page 425 of AIR) the following sentence appears: "Delay in payment of wages can only mean delay in payment of wages which are admitted"; but if one reads the judgment a little further, it appears to be plain that this is only a somewhat unguarded statement. In a subsequent passage at page 678 (of Bom L R) : (at page 426 of A I R) where we attempt to lay down what we think is the jurisdiction of the Authority under the Statute, we deal with the contention advanced by Counsel at the Bar in relation to such jurisdiction and this is what the learned Chief Justice observes :

"It has been suggested by Mr. seervai that this construction of the statute really confines the jurisdiction of the Authority only to cases where wages are admitted, and Mr. Seervai says that if the Legislature intended that the Authority should only try cases of admitted wastes, there was nothing easier than for the Legislature to have so stated. It is not correct that our decision leads to the conclusion that the jurisdiction of the Authority is so limited or restricted be-cause there may be various cases within its jurisdiction where the liability to wages is denied or disputed and which the Authority would still be competent to decide."

In face of this unequivocal statement, it would be wrong to fix Upon the solitary sentence which appears earlier as a ratio of that case; and as one who was a party to that decision, I have no hesitation in saying that it was not our intention to lay down that all that the Payment of Wages Authority can deal with is admitted wages. The matter is also dealt with in A.D. Divekar v. A.K. Shah, 57 Bom LR 1074 (B), by another Division Bench Of this Court, where in terms the Division Bench has held that Section 15 of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, does not limit the