diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 87b44d6c6e0..a8d3c7d4075 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -145,6 +145,8 @@ New Features
 
 32. SOLR-966: Enhance the map() function query to take in an optional default value (Noble Paul, shalin)
 
+33. SOLR-820: Support replication on startup of master with new index. (Noble Paul, Akshay Ukey via shalin)
+
 
 Optimizations
 ----------------------
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/ReplicationHandler.java b/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/ReplicationHandler.java
index 6f10eac2d3b..66ce2ecb703 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/ReplicationHandler.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/solr/handler/ReplicationHandler.java
@@ -31,6 +31,7 @@ import org.apache.solr.request.BinaryQueryResponseWriter;
 import org.apache.solr.request.SolrQueryRequest;
 import org.apache.solr.request.SolrQueryResponse;
 import org.apache.solr.search.SolrIndexSearcher;
+import org.apache.solr.update.DirectUpdateHandler2;
 import org.apache.solr.util.RefCounted;
 import org.apache.solr.util.plugin.SolrCoreAware;
 import org.slf4j.Logger;
@@ -684,6 +685,12 @@ public class ReplicationHandler extends RequestHandlerBase implements SolrCoreAw
       if (replicateAfter.contains("startup")) {
         RefCounted<SolrIndexSearcher> s = core.getNewestSearcher(false);
         try {
+          if (core.getUpdateHandler() instanceof DirectUpdateHandler2) {
+            ((DirectUpdateHandler2) core.getUpdateHandler()).forceOpenWriter();
+          } else {
+            LOG.warn("The update handler being used is not an instance or sub-class of DirectUpdateHandler2. " +
+                    "Replicate on Startup cannot work.");
+          }
           indexCommitPoint = s.get().getReader().getIndexCommit();
         } catch (IOException e) {
           LOG.warn("Unable to get IndexCommit on startup", e);