Veeraswami, J.

This petition is to quash an order of the labour court, Madurai, made on an application filed by the respondent under S.33C(2) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, for computation of retrenchment benefits and arrears of salary. The respondent claimed a total sum of Rs. 637.50 comprised of notice- pay at Rs. 85, retrenchment compensation at Rs. 127.50 and arrears of salary at Rs. 425 for the period from 1 February to 30 June, 1961. The petitioner contended that the respondent had voluntarily stopped from service and that therefore he would not be entitled to retrenchment compensation. The labour court found this point in favor of the petitioner but as regards the arrears of salary, the labour court found that the respondent would be entitled to arrears for the period from 1 February to 5 June, 1961, and that the petitioner was also entitled to a deduction of Rs. 30 from the arrears of salary for that period. On that basis, the labour court directed the petitioner to pay a sum of Rs. 321.33. The ground on which the petitioner impugns the order of the labour court is that it had no jurisdiction to make it. The argument is that the petitioners having raised a plea of discharge of the arrears of salary and thus disputed the claim thereto, the determination of this question would be outside the purview of S. 33C. It is also said that a claim like arrears of salary which does not call for computation in terms of money value, will not be within the purview of S. 33C(2). On the first point, the labour court, as a matter of fact, found that the plea of discharge was not established No ground has been taken in the writ petition against this finding. We should therefore proceed on the basis that the petitioner was in arrears of salary which the labour court has ordered payment of. Alternatively, in our view, S. 33C(2) is also wide enough to enable the labour court to decide the plea of discharge as a jurisdictional question. It is well-settled that where the jurisdiction of a Court is questioned, that Court will be competent to decide that question and for that purpose also to determine the relative facts bearing on the question.No doubt one of us in Lakshmi Mills v. Labour Court, Coimbatore took the view that the scope of Sub-sec. (2) of S. 33C was co-extensive with that of S. 33 (1) But that view can no longer prevail in view of Central Bank of India v. Rajagopalan In that case, the Supreme Court, on a consideration of the scope of S. 33C, expressed the view that Sub-sec. (2) of that section takes within purview cases of workmen who claimed that the benefit to which they are entitled should be computed in terms of money, even though the right to the benefit on which their claim is based is disputed by the employers. Learned counsel for the petitioner contended that in this case it is not the right to arrears of salary that is in dispute, but what is in dispute is whether the arrears claimed by the respondent had been discharged, and this question was not competent for the labour court to decide. We are unable to accept this contention. The right or claim to the arrears which the respondent asked the labour court to compute, would necessarily depend on a decision would necessarily depend on a decision whether the plea of discharge was well-founded and in order to decide the application of the respondent, it was, as an incidental question, necessary to decide it. We hold therefore that the labour court acted within its jurisdiction in deciding the question relating to the plea of discharge of the arrears.

On the other question, the contention for the petitioner is that the word "benefit" in S. 33C(2) should be confined to non-monetary benefit which is required to be converted into terms of money. It is true that this specific question was not expressly decided by Central Bank of India v. Rajagopalan In fact, as we find from the judgment, no dispute in that regard was raised before the Supreme Court but it may be