diff --git a/core/src/main/scala/kafka/server/ReplicaManager.scala b/core/src/main/scala/kafka/server/ReplicaManager.scala
index 54d35ef04b83f..55663d339637a 100644
--- a/core/src/main/scala/kafka/server/ReplicaManager.scala
+++ b/core/src/main/scala/kafka/server/ReplicaManager.scala
@@ -201,7 +201,6 @@ class ReplicaManager(val config: KafkaConfig,
   @volatile var highWatermarkCheckpoints = logManager.liveLogDirs.map(dir =>
     (dir.getAbsolutePath, new OffsetCheckpointFile(new File(dir, ReplicaManager.HighWatermarkFilename), logDirFailureChannel))).toMap
 
-  private var hwThreadInitialized = false
   this.logIdent = s"[ReplicaManager broker=$localBrokerId] "
   private val stateChangeLogger = new StateChangeLogger(localBrokerId, inControllerContext = false, None)
 
@@ -265,8 +264,8 @@ class ReplicaManager(val config: KafkaConfig,
 
   def underReplicatedPartitionCount: Int = leaderPartitionsIterator.count(_.isUnderReplicated)
 
-  def startHighWaterMarksCheckPointThread() = {
-    if(highWatermarkCheckPointThreadStarted.compareAndSet(false, true))
+  def startHighWatermarkCheckPointThread() = {
+    if (highWatermarkCheckPointThreadStarted.compareAndSet(false, true))
       scheduler.schedule("highwatermark-checkpoint", checkpointHighWatermarks _, period = config.replicaHighWatermarkCheckpointIntervalMs, unit = TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
   }
 
@@ -1136,13 +1135,9 @@ class ReplicaManager(val config: KafkaConfig,
             markPartitionOffline(topicPartition)
         }
 
-
         // we initialize highwatermark thread after the first leaderisrrequest. This ensures that all the partitions
         // have been completely populated before starting the checkpointing there by avoiding weird race conditions
-        if (!hwThreadInitialized) {
-          startHighWaterMarksCheckPointThread()
-          hwThreadInitialized = true
-        }
+        startHighWatermarkCheckPointThread()
 
         val futureReplicasAndInitialOffset = new mutable.HashMap[TopicPartition, InitialFetchState]
         for (partition <- newPartitions) {