diff --git a/deepspeed/runtime/engine.py b/deepspeed/runtime/engine.py
index 796b30089f29..457228f34700 100644
--- a/deepspeed/runtime/engine.py
+++ b/deepspeed/runtime/engine.py
@@ -1376,7 +1376,6 @@ def _configure_zero_optimizer(self, optimizer):
             # Overlap and contiguous grads are meaningless in stage 1 and are ignored
             if zero_stage == ZeroStageEnum.optimizer_states:
                 overlap_comm = False
-                contiguous_gradients = False
                 round_robin_gradients = False
 
             if isinstance(self.module, PipelineModule):