SCMTR rollout, amendment windows and penalties

Where SCMTR stands in 2026, when each manifest message is due, how long an arrival or departure manifest can be amended without a customs officer's approval, what an amendment costs, and the penalty the regulations set. Every date and figure here is quoted from a published CBIC circular or notification, or a customs port's public notice, named beside it. Rules and dates change and ports issue their own instructions, so confirm the position at your port with the customs house or ICEGATE before relying on it — this is a summary, not legal advice.

Is SCMTR mandatory at my port yet?

Yes, in stages that ran through 2025 and 2026, with penalties held off until the rollout ends.

When does SCMTR go live at Mumbai, Mundra, Chennai, Nhava Sheva or my port?

Mumbai on 1 September 2026, Mundra on 5 October, Chennai on 9 October, and Nhava Sheva with every remaining port on 15 October 2026 — CBIC Circular 38/2026 (1 September 2026), Annexure A, schedule for phase-wise implementation of all SCMTR messages. No penal action is to be taken during this implementation phase. The full schedule:

The circular's own annexure prints Kakinada against INCOK1 and Cochin against INKAK1 — the two codes the wrong way round (INCOK1 is Cochin). The dates above follow the port names.

Can I still file a supplementary IGM or EGM?

No — not since 12 August 2026 (13 August at Tuticorin). Supplementary IGM/EGM filings are no longer accepted, electronically, by e-mail or on paper, at any port; an addition or change to an import or export general manifest is made only through the SCMTR amendment messages — SAA to amend an arrival manifest (for example to add a bill of lading), SDA to amend a departure manifest (JNCH Public Notice 97/2026). Chennai (Public Notice 118/2026), Mundra (15/2026-27), Kandla (05/2026-27) and Tuticorin (09/2026, from 13 August) issued the same rule in their own notices; Mundra's and Kandla's write "SDM" where they mean the SDA. Nhava Sheva had already disabled the supplementary IGM amendment before entry inward on 20 February 2026 (JNCH Public Notice 18/2026). How late an SAA can go without an officer's approval is below.

When is each manifest message due?

A vessel carrying only coastal goods and working from berths exclusively for coastal goods, at both the loading and the unloading port, needs no arrival or departure manifest (Regulations 4 and 5, as amended).

How late can an arrival manifest be amended without approval?

It depends on how long the voyage from the last port of call is. Circular 43/2020 sets out when a SAM amendment needs no officer's approval:

Filed later than that, the amendment needs the proper officer's approval, which "would also be given online". Regulation 4(4) states the same windows, and adds that for a vessel carrying non-containerised cargo the arrival manifest may be updated, whatever the voyage length, before entry inward.

At Nhava Sheva since 20 February 2026, entry inward is the line that matters in practice. JNCH Public Notice 18/2026: any addition or amendment of a bill in the SAM or a CSN before Sea Entry Inward is done through SAA/SCA, and "this would be automatic and will not be routed through officer"; after Sea Entry Inward it is routed through an officer, who may ask why the bill was left out, and supplementary amendment charges can be levied.

Two published sources disagree about what happens after entry inward, and it is worth knowing which you are relying on. The manifest guide lists error 374 — Entry Inward is Granted-SAM/SDM Amendment Not Alllowed — and 373 for a CSN amendment, which read as a flat refusal. ICES Advisory 37/2026, in the section below, says instead that an amendment after entry inward is allowed and needs the proper officer's approval. The codes were added to the guide in May 2025 and the advisory is of September 2026, so the advisory is the later word — but customs has not withdrawn the codes, and nobody has published which of the two ICES actually does since 18 September 2026.

The weight of it is on the advisory's side. Both the advisory and the process CBIC's SCMTR team set out for the trade describe the same order — file the SAA, then approach the local customs officer for final approval, with the amended data appearing only after that approval. That order only makes sense if the SAA is taken in and held, which is what 322 describes, rather than refused outright. It is still not the same as having seen what the system returns.

So expect either, and plan for the slower one: the amendment may be taken in and held for approval, or it may come straight back as 373/374. Neither outcome means you filed it wrongly. The related codes are 319 (a CSN amendment is already pending approval — a second cannot be stacked on it), 322 (the same for a manifest amendment), 321 (the CSN is closed) and 323 (the manifest is closed).

The practical consequence is the same either way: get the amendment in before entry inward if you possibly can. Before it, the advisory's own table says no officer approval is needed at all.

What do I give the officer when an amendment of empty containers or transhipment cargo needs approval?

At Nhava Sheva, a short fixed list — and the officer is not to ask for more as a matter of routine. JNCH Public Notice 115/2026 (22 September 2026) covers amendments of the IGM, SAM, SDM and other manifest or transhipment records that go to the proper officer, for two kinds of cargo:

The officer processes the request once satisfied it is genuine and correct, and may still ask for more where something does not match or needs verifying. A difficulty goes to the Deputy or Assistant Commissioner in charge of Import Noting / Manifest Clearance at JNCH.

What the notice does not change:

The message. The amendment is still an SAA or SDA built the usual way; the notice is about the papers beside it, not the file.When approval is needed. It does not say whether it applies before or after entry inward — it covers whatever request reaches the proper officer. When that happens is in the section above.The forwarder's side. A CSN amendment (SCA) is not mentioned.

At Mundra too. Mundra Customs Public Notice 17/2026 (25 September 2026) adopts JNCH's notices and standing orders mutatis mutandis, on a CBIC letter of 17 July 2026 that asks every port to take JNCH's processes as the model. No other port had published the same list by 1 October 2026 — ask your customs house what it wants before assuming JNCH's list applies.

Does a CSN amendment need officer approval too — and can I amend the VCN?

Yes to the first, no to the second. ICES Advisory 37/2026 (18 September 2026) is the first pan-India statement of both, where JNCH's Public Notice 18/2026 above had only ever said it for Nhava Sheva:

The deletion is easy to miss and the sequence does not work without it. Advisory 37/2026 does not spell it out; the process CBIC's SCMTR team set out for the trade does, in both of the post-SAM columns — the line deletes what it already filed before the corrected picture goes in. That process was set out for the console split, and ICES Advisory 38/2026 publishes a deletion for that case only: a straight master that must become consolidated (Q1), or any change of a line's consolidation indicator, consolidator PAN or previous reference (Q2) — with the drop and the re-add both inside the SAA itself, not before it. For any other CSN amendment after the SAM — figures, a party — the line's matching SAA updates the line (U, "modification of allowable fields", Q3); nothing in the advisory has it deleted first. It is the line's action on its own ICEGATE login, never the consolidator's, and an SAA filed on top of what is already there is the likeliest explanation we have for an amendment that "goes in" and changes nothing.

"Delete SAM" means the bill's own line item, not the manifest — our reading, and since ICES Advisory 38/2026 a well-founded one. The phrase is the reported process's; the advisory never uses it. What the advisory (Q1, Scenario A) describes, for a straight master that must become consolidated, is dropping and re-adding the bill's own line item: the line must "first drop (delete) the existing Straight BL line item and subsequently re-add the Master BL configured as consolidated, linking the reference details of the CSN and House BL provided by the forwarder" — an SAA carrying amdType D on the bill's line and S on its replacement. Its Q2 goes further: a change of a bill from straight to consolidated (or back), of the consolidator PAN, or of the previous reference (CSN / PCIN / MCIN) is "prohibited by system validation rules" as an in-place update and must always go by drop and re-add. The message set says the same thing from the other side — SACHM23 has no message that withdraws a manifest at all (its six events are SAM, SAA, SDM, SEI, SDA and SDN), and an SAA amends a SAM and therefore needs one to exist — which is what the reading rests on, and the advisory's procedure is what it agrees with. Phrase the request to your line as drop our line item and re-add it as consolidated against CSN … of …. What no acknowledgement on record yet shows is customs accepting such an SAA, in one file or two; treat the procedure as customs' published rule and its outcome as unproven.

The conveyance reference (VCN) and rotation number cannot be changed in a CSN amendment at all — not before SEI, not after, not with officer approval. This is a flat exclusion, not a timing rule: How do I correct the vessel and VCN? carries what that leaves you with.

A CSN deletion is not always self-service either. Once a SAM already references the CSN, the deletion has to go through the jurisdictional customs officer, whether or not SEI has been granted yet — only a CSN with no SAM against it can still be deleted directly by its own submitter (or, at any stage, by the jurisdictional officer). ICES Advisory 38/2026 (Q5) confirms the self-service half and adds what follows it: while no SAM has been filed against the CSN, the submitter may delete it and "promptly re-file corrected particulars without generating mismatch conflicts". A refile after a deletion measured before that advisory was refused as a duplicate (122/123); customs says the system has changed, and no acceptance on record yet shows it from customs' side.

If the CSN was never filed before the SAM, the shipping line adds the missing house bill by amending the manifest (SAA, "splitting of BLs") rather than waiting on a CSN that was never filed — the advisory asks lines to compile such requests and file one consolidated SAA rather than one per bill, "to avoid duplication of work & system traffic".

Two general notes from the same advisory, worth keeping beside the amendment fee and penalty below: CSN data is validated again wherever the SAM refers to it, so a mismatch is a SAM-level rejection even though the CSN itself was accepted; and error 700 — "Refile" — means the file was not processed, not that it was rejected on its content, so refile it rather than resending the same data repeatedly in a short span.

How late can a departure manifest be amended?

Circular 43/2020: the SDM "can be updated any time before SDN is filed without the approval of the officer". Regulation 5(3) as amended in 2019 lets the carrier update the departure manifest within twenty-four hours after departure — seventy-two hours for a vessel carrying non-containerised cargo.

Since 12 August 2026 there is no other route: a change to an import or export general manifest is made only through the SCMTR amendment messages — SAA for an arrival manifest, SDA for a departure manifest (JNCH Public Notice 97/2026).

What one carrier tells its customers (Maersk, 2 September 2026 — the carrier's words, not customs' rule): with ICEGATE 1.5 supplementary filing switched off on 31 August 2026, it takes an export amendment request "from SDM filing up to Departure + 5 days" and an import one "from SAM filing up to Sea Inward Entry and no later than ETA − 8 hours". Its reasons for turning an amendment request away are its own and not error codes: a mistyped PCIN (which customs' validation then refuses), a scanned or unofficial shipping bill on ODeX instead of the original, a split shipment without the revised split shipping bill, identical house and master bill numbers on an import, foreign-shipper, switch-B/L and cross-trade transactions, and a shipper-owned container whose owner's PAN is not registered against the customs bond. Where a carrier's window is shorter than customs' — and "Departure + 5 days" is longer than Regulation 5(3)'s twenty-four hours — the carrier's is the one a forwarder meets first.

What does an amendment cost?

A flat ₹1,000 per IGM amendment is the fee CBIC Circular 14/2017 set when it revised the amendment fees upward, "to discourage the tendency to file amendments". JNCH Public Notice 78/2026 states that the amendment-fee provisions under the circulars, public notices and standing orders governing IGM/EGM apply, wherever relevant, to amendments processed under SCMTR. Ask your customs house how it applies the fee to SAA/SDA — Nhava Sheva's notice on amendments after entry inward speaks of charges that "can be levied".

What is the penalty?

Up to ₹50,000. Regulation 13 of the Sea Cargo Manifest and Transhipment Regulations, 2018: "An authorised carrier who contravenes any provision of these regulations shall be liable to a penalty which may extend to rupees fifty thousand." CBIC Circular 10/2025 restates it. Regulation 11 separately allows a registration to be suspended — Nhava Sheva used it against a sea agent in August 2026 (JNCH Public Notice 96/2026). The circulars of July and September 2026 direct that no penal action be taken during the implementation phase (see the first table).

Does entry inward wait for customs to board the ship?

No. CBIC Circular 26/2026 (15 May 2026): grant of Entry Inward and Vessel Sail-out Clearance "shall not be made contingent upon physical boarding of Customs officers on the vessel", and they are to be granted promptly upon filing of the requisite documents, including the Sea Arrival Manifest.

Who do I take an SCMTR problem to at Chennai?

The help desk Chennai customs set up by Public Notice 130/2026 (23 September 2026): officers allocated by vessel, one pair for every other vessel and all consolidation work, and a refused SAA/SCA's Unique ID sent to them at once. Contacts and what to send are on Chennai customs' SCMTR help desk.

Related

Which SCMTR message am I supposed to file?Working with a shipping line filing — including reading customs' replyBill of Entry and the IGM — what an SAA amendment is and when it needs approval, and what to do when the vessel has arrived with no manifest filed at allChanging or withdrawing a filing customs already accepted — the CSN side: the VCN/rotation-number exclusion, deletion once a SAM exists, and everything else amendable in an SCAWhich error list does my code come from? — including the codes only a manifest getsEvery reference number — VCN, rotation number, MCIN and PCIN