NLIU Bhopal denied responsibility for, and knowledge of, senior advocate Indira Jaising allegedly being turned away from the law school’s gates yesterday, when she reached there to address an inaugural session on gender sensitisation hosted by a goverment agency.

The senior counsel and former additional solicitor general (ASG) Jaising had posted on her Twitter handle: “Stopped from attending sexual harassment workshop by government of MP today. Is it due to my appearance in court in the Vypam Scam?”

NLIU had yesterday inaugurated a two-day workshop on gender sensitisation and capacity building training on sexual harassment of women at work places, and the program was attended by 200 trainees, NLIU faculty coordinator Dr Raka Arya told Legally India.

Jaising, who reached NLIU at 10:30am yesterday, on invitation to address the program’s inaugural session, was prevented from going inside, reported The Wire. Jaising said that the organisers told her that the state government had not given “clearances on her name” for the event. At this, she left.

Arya told Legally India that the incident had resulted from a “miscommunication” between Jaising and the government agency organising the event. She said that the agency had sent Jaising an invitation for the event as late as on the evening of 11 December.

Arya also said that the university was not aware of what happened between that agency and Jaising at the venue because no direct communication had taken place between NLIU and Jaising.

“Who are we to take a stand against a person of such a stature,” commented Arya, adding that a team from the Lawyers Collective – Jaising’s human rights advocacy NGO – had been present on the NLIU campus throughout the duration of the two-day programme.

Jaising told Legally India that it was the government and not the university that had prevented her from speaking at the event. She told other media that she suspected that she was facing a government backlash for representing petitioners seeking a CBI probe into the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board scam (Vyapam).

The program was jointly organised by NLIU, Lawyers Collective, the Madhya Pradesh government and UN Women, the body’s entity for gender equality and empowerment of women.

Jaising is representing the petitioners, including former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijay Singh,  in the Vyapam scam before the high court and the Supreme Court.