With a little over a year to go for the BMC elections, the civic body is now set to increase the permissible height of slums to 18 feet, or to ground-plus-two structures.

This is, of course, a huge — and familiar — poll sop to slum dwellers: In 2011, just a year before the previous civic polls, slums were allowed to rise from ground-floor structures to 14 feet, with the addition of another storey after corporators pushed a similar proposal through.