(Adds election chief's comments at news conference) DHAKA, April 5 (Reuters) - Bangladesh's Election Commission has urged the country's army-backed interim government to lift a ban on indoor political meetings and to allowing limited party activity while it prepares to hold elections. But an election looks increasingly unlikely to be held soon as election chief ATM Shamsul Huda said on Thursday it would take at least 18 months to prepare a legitimate list of eligible voters. All political activity has been banned since the government imposed a state of emergency on Jan. 11 following weeks of violence. Parliamentary elections planned for Jan. 22 were also postponed indefinitely. Huda said the commission needed to start discussions soon with political parties on a number of electoral reforms and also the compilation of new voters roll. "If the ban goes we can start dialogue with the political parties," Huda told reporters. But at a news conference on Thursday, Huda said it will take at least 18 months to prepare a correct voters' list "with photographs". Bangladesh had 75.1 million registered voters in the national election in 2001, election commission officials said. A new list prepared in 2006 with 91.4 million voters was scrapped by the interim government for deliberately incorporating up to 14 million "ghost" voters. The government insists that holding a free and credible election is a priority, but it first wants to complete a crackdown on corruption. Since January, security forces have detained more than 160 key political figures for alleged graft and abuse of power. They include Tareque Rahman, son of most the recent prime minister, Begum Khaleda Zia, who was detained on March 7. On Thursday, Tareque was taken to a so-called quick trial court to be formally charged, but the case was adjourned until April 17, court officials said.
