The Chief minister of Tamil Nadu Edappadi Palaniswami is one among the panel of recipients who have been conferred with honorary doctorate degree from Dr MGR Educational and Research Institute in Chennai, which will be awarded to him on October 20th, 2019.

The reports say that the Chief minister will be honored with Doctor of Letters - (D Litt) which has been considered as the highest degree decorating the recognition for the recipients in their exceptional achievements in particular field while in some of the countries, D Litt degree has been treated as the degree beyond Ph.D and equals Doctor of Science. It has been reported that the other recipients are G Satheesh Reddy, Chairman of DRDO, S Raja Sabapathy, Chairman and Director of Ganga hospitals - both will be awarded with honorary Doctor of Science degrees while Music director Harris Jayaraj and dancer Shobana Chandrakumar will be conferred with Doctor of Letters along with the state chief minister for their exemplary work in the respective fields.

The reports had stated that on October 20th, Dr MGR Educational and Research Institute, one of the deemed universities in Chennai will host the ceremony and award the recipients to honor their achievements on the occasion of institute's 28th convocation in which the Chief minister will deliver his convocation address to the students. 

Dr MGR University has been one of the private universities in the state to award honorary doctorates in the middle of the government institutions where in the year of 2007, it had honored Actors Vijay and Vijayakumar with the doctorate degrees while in 2008, Tennis star Sania Mirza was conferred with highest educational award. Through being conferred with the Doctorate, Edappadi Palaniswami will be joining the list of his predecessors who received the honors. Former Chief ministers of the state M Karunanidhi and MG Ramachandran were awarded with four and two doctorate degrees respectively whereas J Jayalalithaa was honored with five doctorate degrees during her tenure.

Jayalalithaa tops the list with more doctorates where Madras University, Dr MGR University, Madurai Kamaraj University, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and Bharatidasan University had conferred her with doctorate degrees while her rival Karunanidhi was the first Chief minister in the country to receive doctorate degree where he was the recipient of the honorary doctorate from Annamalai University that was awarded to him in 1971, two years after he took office of the Chief minister for the first time after which he was honored by Dr MGR University, Madurai Kamaraj University and Madras University in later years.

The founder of current ruling party ADMK and the former Chief minister MG Ramachandran had decorated with two honorary degrees, one from the Madras University and the other from the World University in Arizona, United States. Amidst the practice of awarding doctorates that was mostly observed by the government universities, Chennai based Sathyabama University was the first private university in the state to pioneer the award where it honored actor Kamal Haasan with doctorate degree in 2005.

Dr MGR Educational and Research Institute has been founded by A C Shanmugam, the leader of New Justice party that observes close alliance with ADMK party in the state of Tamil Nadu.