"This is not a valid IGM"

A customs broker files the Bill of Entry, not the CSN, and the BoE is checked against a different record from the one SCMTR filings live in. The most common way that surfaces is a BoE refused with "THIS IS NOT A VALID IGM" on a shipment whose CSN and manifest are both plainly visible on ICEGATE. Nothing is contradictory about that, and this page explains why.

What is that error actually saying?

That at the customs station where the Bill of Entry is being filed, there is no Import General Manifest line matching what the BoE quotes. It is a statement about the IGM, not about your CSN and not about the carrier's SCMTR manifest — both can be accepted and on record while it is true.

The IGM is raised at the Indian port in connection with the vessel's call. A SCMTR message is accepted days or weeks earlier. For the whole gap between the two, there is an accepted filing and no IGM, and anything that reads the IGM will say so.

Why does the shipment show in the New SAM/IGM enquiry but not the old one?

Because they are two enquiries over two different databases, not an old and a new version of one enquiry. This is the single most useful thing to know about the pair:

So "it is in the new enquiry and not the old one" translates to: the SCMTR message is accepted, and no IGM line exists yet at that port. That is the same fact the Bill of Entry is refusing on. The new enquiry is not causing the refusal and there is nothing wrong with it — appearing there is the ordinary, expected state from acceptance onward. The absence from the older enquiry is the signal worth reading.

Every other bill on the vessel shows, and one does not

Then the IGM exists, and the usual explanation does not fit. Look at the bill's house bills before anything else. A consolidation's house bills are what the older enquiry lists, each on the IGM line it was mapped onto — and a house bill declared as transhipment (cargo movement TC, cargo type TR, onward to a foreign port) is not imported at this port, so it is never mapped onto an IGM line. When every house bill under a master is transhipment, the older enquiry has nothing to list and answers "No details found", although the line's SAM holds the master and customs has issued its MCIN.

This was measured on one Nhava Sheva manifest in September 2026: across five consolidated lines, every house bill cleared locally (LC) had an IGM line and none of the eighteen transhipment ones did; the master whose house bills were all transhipment was the only one the older enquiry could not find. That is a measurement, not a statement from customs.

To confirm it for your bill, look it up on the New SAM/IGM enquiry (or BL tracking here): the SAM record shows the master on its line with its MCIN, and each forwarder's CSN lists its house bills with their cargo movement. If they are all TC, nothing is missing — the cargo moves on under transhipment, not onto a Bill of Entry. If any house bill is LC and still has no IGM line once the rest of the vessel's bills have one, that is worth taking to the line and to customs, with the MCIN and the CSN numbers in hand.

The carrier says they filed the manifest as SAA. What is SAA?

SAA is Sea Arrival Manifest Filing – Amendment — CBIC's own expansion. It is one of the six reporting events on the carrier's manifest message, and it is an amendment rather than the manifest itself:

The distinction matters, because an arrival-manifest amendment can need an officer's approval, and until it is approved it has not taken effect. CBIC's SCMTR FAQ sets the rule by how late the amendment is against the vessel's expected arrival:

Filed later than that, the amendment requires approval by the proper officer, granted online. So an SAA can be accepted as a message — and therefore appear on the new enquiry — while the IGM line it asks for has not been written, because the amendment is still sitting unapproved.

That gives three readings, and they need different actions:

A late SAA awaiting officer approval. The most likely case when the manifest is visible and the IGM is not. The remedy sits with the carrier and the proper officer at that port — nothing on the Bill of Entry side clears it.An SAA filed inside the timeline. No approval is involved, so approval is not what you are waiting on. Look instead at whether the vessel has a rotation and entry inward at all.The manifest lodged only as SAA, with no accepted SAM against that rotation. Then no IGM is generated at all. Customs' own error list carries 207 — SAM is Not Filed Against Given Rotation Number for exactly that state, and the carrier has to file the base manifest.

Worth asking the carrier which of the three it is before escalating anywhere: the filing date of the SAA, the expected arrival it was filed against, and its approval status settle it between them, and they decide who can fix it.

The vessel has already arrived and no manifest was filed at all — is it too late?

No self-service fix exists for that state, but the position is better than it looks, for a reason most filers do not expect: Entry Inward is not granted just because the vessel arrived.

CBIC Circular 26/2026 (15 May 2026) directs that Entry Inward and Sail-out Clearance "shall not be made contingent upon physical boarding of Customs officers on the vessel" and are instead "granted promptly upon filing of the requisite documents, including the Sea Arrival Manifest" — see Does entry inward wait for customs to board the ship?. Read together with error 207 — SAM is Not Filed Against Given Rotation Number above, a vessel that has physically arrived with no SAM ever filed against its rotation has, on this directive, very likely not had Sea Entry Inwards (SEI) granted either — SAM filing is one of the documents SEI waits on, not a formality that follows arrival automatically. This is our reading of two circulars together, not a case we have watched happen at a port — a filer confirming this with the boarding officer settles it, we haven't.

Why that matters: the entire officer-approval-vs-automatic split for CSN/SAM amendments — laid out below in Does a CSN amendment need officer approval too? — turns on whether SEI has been granted, not on whether the ship has berthed. If it genuinely has not, filing the base SAM now should still be a before-SEI filing procedurally, which per JNCH Public Notice 18/2026 and ICES Advisory 37/2026 goes through directly, with no officer routing and no amendment fee.

What to actually do, in order:

File the base SAM immediately — even incomplete, even naming bills as straight BLs where house-level detail isn't ready. JNCH PN 18/2026's whole point is that this is the expected practice: file what you have now, correct the House BL detail afterward through a SAA. Waiting for a complete manifest before filing anything is the pattern these advisories were written to stop.Confirm the Entry Inward / inward date on the vessel's record before assuming officer approval is needed. Look it up the way How do I tell which one I am looking at? below describes — an empty inward date means SEI has not been granted, whatever the vessel's physical status, and the SAM (and any follow-up SAA for the HBLs) should process automatically.If the inward date is already populated — some ports still link it to boarding in practice, circular or not — the filing goes through the officer-approval path instead: expect the ₹1,000 flat IGM amendment fee CBIC Circular 14/2017 sets (still cited by JNCH as applying under SCMTR) and a wait for approval, not a refusal outright.Penalty exposure (Regulation 13, up to ₹50,000) is a separate question from all of the above and depends on whether the discharge port has finished its phased SCMTR rollout — see When does SCMTR go live at my port?. Ports still in the transition window are under a standing "no penal action" direction; ports already live are not automatically protected, so this is worth raising with the jurisdictional officer directly rather than assumed either way.

How do I tell which one I am looking at?

Look the master bill of lading up on the platform — BL tracking in the header (or ? → Customs lookup) when signed in, or the public tracking page when not — and read three facts off the carrier's filing:

Inward date. Empty means customs has not granted the vessel entry inward. Early in the voyage that is simply not yet, and waiting is the whole remedy.Rotation. The rotation number for the vessel's call at that port. The IGM number is the same value under the name the vessel-call feed uses. No rotation means there is nothing for a BoE to quote.IGM line. Shown on each house line of the accepted-filings record as a line and sub-line, empty until customs has mapped that consignment onto the IGM. This is the deciding one: a populated IGM line means the mapping exists and the BoE ought to validate; an empty one on a house line means it does not exist yet, and the problem is upstream of the Bill of Entry entirely. Read it on the house line, not the master row. The master row of a record shows no IGM line even when one exists — measured on the carrier's manifest record of a bill that was plainly on the IGM at line 181, sub-line 0 — so an empty master row proves nothing either way.

Two things that will produce a false "nothing found" on either enquiry, and are worth ruling out first: searching by the house bill rather than the master, and searching at the wrong port. Both enquiries hold house detail underneath the master rather than as its own record, and both are keyed by location.

Which number does the Bill of Entry's IGM field want?

The IGM number — which is the rotation number — together with the manifest line and sub-line. How the IGM addresses a consignment follows the shape of the bill, measured on the older manifest enquiry against real bills:

A house bill under a master is a sub-line of its master's line: the IGM lists the house bill at, say, line 17, sub-line 1, and that is the address the Bill of Entry quotes.A direct master bill with no house bill under it is the line itself, at sub-line 0. The IGM row carries the master bill number and no house bill, and the Bill of Entry quotes the IGM number, that line and sub-line 0.

For a direct bill this is the one case where the older manifest enquiry is the record to read: the accepted-filings record shows the IGM line only on house lines, and a straight bill has none. The platform's tracking lookup shows both, so the line and sub-line are on screen either way.

None of the other identifiers on the new enquiry is a substitute, and the ones most often mistaken for it are:

The ICEGATE id on a filing, which is the handle acknowledgements are fetched with.The CIN (MCIN or PCIN), which is the consignment's own reference. The BoE quotes it too, but in its own field, and holding a CIN does not mean an IGM line exists.The CSN number, which the public enquiry has published since September 2026 beside each accepted filing. It is the filing's own reference, the one an amendment or deletion quotes — not the manifest line the Bill of Entry wants.

Transcribing one of those into the BoE's IGM field produces this same error, so it is worth confirming which number was actually keyed before concluding the manifest is at fault.

I am filing at an ICD, and the gateway IGM does not work

Expected. Cargo moving inland is transhipment: it is manifested at the gateway port, then moves under a transhipment declaration, and the Bill of Entry at the inland depot is filed against the local IGM raised there, not the gateway one. Quoting the gateway IGM at the ICD gives this error and nothing is wrong with the manifest.

That local IGM is keyed to the gateway's — its rotation number and date, the gateway port, and the SMTP (Sub-Manifest Transhipment Permit) number and date customs raised from the carrier's manifest. None of those four is anything a forwarder files or can supply; they belong to the line's manifest and the gateway custom house. See Where the cargo goes after the gateway port for which movement this is and how it is declared.

Can a substituted vessel or a stale VCN break the Bill of Entry?

It is a live candidate, and it belongs on the list of causes above — it is the version of this problem a forwarder hears about from the customs broker rather than from customs, days after their own acknowledgement said the filing was fine.

The two records are joined at the arrival that actually happened. The IGM is raised against the vessel's rotation at the port; the Bill of Entry quotes that IGM number with a line and sub-line; and your CSN reaches that IGM through the call it names. A CSN accepted against a call the ship never made is a filing attached to an arrival that did not happen — so the house bills under it need not be mapped onto the IGM raised for the arrival that did, and the broker sees the same "THIS IS NOT A VALID IGM" a late manifest produces, from a different cause.

How to tell it apart from the ordinary causes above: read the IGM line and sub-line on the house line of the accepted-filings record, as the section above describes. Empty means the mapping does not exist. If the manifest is in, entry inwards has been granted, and your house lines are still unmapped, then a stale ship or call on your own CSN is worth checking — take the vessel and VCN off your accepted CSN and the vessel and rotation off the carrier's manifest record and compare them, and if they disagree you have found something whoever else you ask would have to find as well.

Tiered honestly: how the two records join is reasoning from what each one is, not a case we have traced end to end. No Bill of Entry failure we hold has been traced back to a substituted vessel, and customs publishes no enquiry that would show the join.

It is also the reason not to leave a stale call alone on a filing customs has already accepted. Your own acknowledgement says nothing is wrong, the consequence lands several days later, and the person who feels it is the importer's broker — by which time Sea Entry Inwards has usually been granted, and anything that can still be changed waits on an officer's approval. As of ICES Advisory 37/2026, an amendment is not actually a sanctioned way to correct it — the advisory excludes the VCN and rotation number from a CSN amendment outright, which is the opposite of what this page previously pointed to. See what that leaves you with before sending anything, and raise it with the shipping line and your jurisdictional customs officer the day you notice, whatever the eventual fix turns out to be — the earlier it is raised, the more routes are still open.

What is worth sending when this is escalated to customs

A generic "the BoE is blocked" comes back asking for these, so send them first — and send them only after the check above, because if the IGM line is genuinely not mapped yet the answer is with the carrier rather than with customs:

Master bill of lading number and date, and the port code the BoE is filed atVessel name, IMO number, voyage number and the Voyage Call NumberRotation number and date, and the inward date if grantedThe carrier's manifest reporting event — SAM or SAA — its filing date, the expected arrival it was filed against, and the approval status if it is an amendmentThe IGM line and sub-line, if the record shows anyThe Bill of Entry reference and the error exactly as it appeared

The question to put is specific: the manifest is accepted and visible on the new enquiry under this reporting event, no IGM line exists at this port, and the BoE is refused — is the amendment pending approval, and when will the line be raised?

The Bill of Entry answers from its own error list

A code that came back on a Bill of Entry is not a CSN code, even when the number looks familiar. The Bill of Entry's reply carries the message id CACHI01, and its list is its own: 455 codes on a fresh submission, 391 on an amendment, 417 on the single-window filing, in ICEGATE's own wording. Its top band is system-side — 995 Internal error in inserting data in que, 998 Error in transferring data, 999 Check data/duty related parameters like CTH/CETH/RSP/NOTN — and 994 is not in it, nor in any other list ICEGATE publishes. Which error list does my code come from? has every family and how to tell them apart.

How much of this is measured?

Worth stating plainly, because the two halves are not equally certain.

Measured, against real bills on the live enquiries: that the two enquiries read different sources and answer at different times; that the IGM number and the rotation number are the same value; that the IGM line and sub-line on a house line of the accepted-filings record are the same line and sub-line the older manifest enquiry returns for that bill; that a master row shows no IGM line even when the bill is on the IGM; that a straight bill sits on the IGM at sub-line 0 and a house bill at sub-line 1 upward; and that the inward date is empty until entry inward is granted.

Published by CBIC, and quoted here rather than inferred: the expansion of every reporting event, the amendment-approval timelines above, and the error codes — all from ICEGATE's own SCMTR FAQ and error table.

Not measured, and treated here as reasoning rather than fact: exactly how and when an accepted SCMTR manifest becomes an IGM line inside customs' systems, what the Bill of Entry validation checks behind that message, and — the section above says so where it stands — whether a CSN naming a call the ship never made is what leaves a house line unmapped. Both are inside ICES, which publishes no enquiry over either. That is why the recommended step is to read the IGM line off the record and let it decide, rather than to assume which side is at fault.

Related

The two enquiries and what each can answer: Where is my cargo?What the accepted-filings record contains: What customs already holdsWhich number is minted by whom, and when: Every reference number, who issues it, and whenWho files the manifest and under which events: Which SCMTR message do I file?Transhipment inland and what it makes the filing: Where the cargo goes after the gateway portEntry Inward timing, the officer-approval split for amendments, and adding missing House BLs via SAA: SCMTR rollout, amendments and penalties