Jquery UI modal show not working

This isn't a CodeIgniter related question, i.m.o.
It's about Javascript and/or jQuery UI.

A few steps you need to check:
Do you load jQuery and jQuery UI correctly?
Do you have a $(document).ready() section to handle jQuery events?

If you replace

Code:

$("#emplinfo_div").modal('show');

by

Code:

alert("You clicked the link to open a popup!");

Does that work?

To clear the issue, the above modal window is in another view of codeigniter which display the base page with other info. The link is given to click to show only that info in a modal window.