DHAKA (AFP) -- Bangladesh's caretaker government worked Saturday to end the damaging impasse threatening national elections after opposition parties extended a deadline for key changes before mass protests resume.

A question mark hung over election commissioner M.A. Aziz, whose removal is one of the opposition's main demands, after sources indicated moves were afoot to force him out.

The opposition on Friday gave a seven-day extension of its deadline for the interim government to demonstrate its neutrality by agreeing to an 11-point list of demands.

Thousands of people took to the streets after the previous government's term expired last week, leaving 24 dead and more than 2,000 injured, in protest against perceived bias among officials organizing elections due in January.

"We have given you seven days during which we want to see that you implement all our 11 demands," Sheikh Hasina Wajed, leader of the Awami League party, told a rally attended by 100,000 supporters on Friday.

"If you fail to implement the people's demands within this deadline we will resume non-stop transport blockades and protests all over the country from November 12," she added, without explaining the discrepancy.

The Awami League and its 13 leftist allies had earlier set a deadline of Friday afternoon for the non-party caretaker body headed by president Iajuddin Ahmed to show it was neutral enough to hold free and fair elections in January.

The temporary administration has pledged to weed out biased civil servants and replaced a string of top-level officials including the national police chief.

It has made no public statement on the future of the election commissioner.

A report Friday by the mass-selling Prothom Alo newspaper, however, quoted unnamed members of the interim government's advisory council, or cabinet, saying the president intended to ask Aziz to stand down.

Awami League secretary general Abdul Jalil also quoted a message from the caretaker body stating it would "reconstitute" the election commission.

More changes were expected Saturday although it was not clear if they would be enough to satisfy the Awami League.

"We want neutral men for the top bureaucratic positions against whom there are no allegations of bias in favor of the government. But what the government is doing is replacing tainted officials with other tainted officials," Jalil said Friday.

In addition to calling renewed protests, the Awami League has also threatened to boycott the polls unless its demands are met.

The party fears that biased officials appointed to key posts by the outgoing Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led government have destroyed its chances of winning the election.

It accuses Aziz and his two deputies of drawing up an electoral list that includes 10 million phony voters and excludes many of its own supporters.

The opposition alliance also objected to the government's choice for the head of the caretaker government, former supreme court judge K.M. Hasan.

He declined the job last week and the president named himself as the head of the body after the BNP and Awami League failed to come up with a compromise candidate.

The four days of violence, which saw central Dhaka and many towns across the country turned into battle grounds, prompted concerns that a state of emergency could be declared.

Bangladesh's caretaker government system was set up to prevent outgoing governments stacking the cards in their favor by politicising supposedly impartial bodies such as the election commission.

It must hold elections within 90 days of taking power.