diff --git a/cluster-autoscaler/utils/drain/drain.go b/cluster-autoscaler/utils/drain/drain.go
index cfdf28ba29..4828f2c93c 100644
--- a/cluster-autoscaler/utils/drain/drain.go
+++ b/cluster-autoscaler/utils/drain/drain.go
@@ -83,7 +83,6 @@ func GetPodsForDeletionOnNodeDrain(
 
 	pods = []*apiv1.Pod{}
 	daemonSetPods = []*apiv1.Pod{}
-	checkReferences := listers != nil
 	// filter kube-system PDBs to avoid doing it for every kube-system pod
 	kubeSystemPDBs := make([]*policyv1.PodDisruptionBudget, 0)
 	for _, pdb := range pdbs {