With daily coronavirus cases significantly decreasing, the Gujarat government on Friday announced the reopening of schools for class 12, polytechnic institutes and colleges from July 15 with 50% of their capacity.
The government said that students' attendance will be voluntary and that too with their parent's permission.
The decision was taken by a core committee led by state education minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama, chief secretary Anil Mukim and several other officers.
The decision comes after daily coronavirus cases fell below 100 over the past several days.
On Thursday the state reported 62 new positive cases in 24 hours and no casualty after nearly 120 days.
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"We believe that in most of these institutes students must have been vaccinated or will be vaccinated in the coming days. Besides, we can shut them back if we see the cases resurging again," said a senior official.
Earlier in February, the state government had permitted schools to reopen after nearly 11 months since the pandemic broke out. A month later in March, as the cases started rising, the government ordered shut down.