Jamshedpur will get the perfect present this Founder's Day.

The multi-crore Marine Drive will be completed and thrown open to public on the birth anniversary of India's first visionary industrialist Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata on March 3 - the fourth deadline for the ambitious project.

A senior official of Tata Steel's logistics department, which is overseeing construction and beautification of the double-lane artery worth Rs 120-crore, said that they were trying to resolve the encroachment issue, the main hurdle for completion of Marine Drive.

The steel major had been trying to remove encroachers along Sati Ghat of Subernarekha river for a long time.

'Almost all encroachments have been removed. Only four to five houses are still a stumbling block. Attempts are being made to find a solution amicably so that the project is completed on time,' Ashish Mathur, head of corporate communications, Tata Steel.

Construction of the 10km stretch is almost over and double-arm LED streetlights have been installed at a distance of every 30 metres on the median. Once lit, the lights will give Marine Drive the look of a Queen's Necklace just like its posh namesake of Mumbai.

Mumbai's Marine Drive, a C-shaped six-lane road along the coast, is called the Queen's Necklace for the same reason.

Plantation of flowering plants on the median will begin this month while stone pitching in adherence to environmental norms to prevent soil erosion and river encroachment has also been completed in 90 per cent of the stretch. Crash barriers have been erected to prevent passing vehicles from falling into the river.

Work started on the project in June 2012 and was supposed to end by June 2014. But encroachments on the Kadma-Sonari side delayed construction. Though the project got a boost in September last year after negotiations with slum-dwellers, nearly 25 families refused to budge from the 50-metre stretch along Sati Ghat, thus jeopardising Tata Steel's plan to open the road by November 2014.

The steel major then set a mid-January 2015 deadline, but is all set to miss that too.

An official of Tata Steel said that the local administration did not cooperate in removing the encroachments.

'The project was supposed to be completed in September this year and later the deadline was extended to November. If the local administration had helped us, the project would have been ready by mid-January. Unfortunately, we again had to extend the deadline further till March,' said the official.

Marine Drive, a part of Tata Steel's western corridor project, meanders along Subernarekha linking Sakchi-Kadma-Sonari with Adityapur toll bridge and was conceived to keep heavy vehicles off city roads, thus getting rid of in the steel city.

Once completed, all heavy vehicles will take this road. 'Now the Marine Drive is partially open for trucks, trailers and other multi-axle vehicles. But, drivers fear to take the stretch at night. Once the streetlights are in place, the Marine Drive will be a trucker's paradise,' said Tazinder Singh who drives on this artery.