diff --git a/solr/CHANGES.txt b/solr/CHANGES.txt
index 0fbe7059236..d714568088b 100644
--- a/solr/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/solr/CHANGES.txt
@@ -272,7 +272,8 @@ Optimizations
   For Example: The facet request  {type:terms, field:field1, facet:{x:"unique(field2)"}}
   saw a 7x improvement when field1 and 1M unique terms and field2 had 1000 unique terms.
   (yonik)
-  
+
+* SOLR-7840: ZkStateReader.updateClusterState fetches watched collections twice from ZK. (shalin)
 
 Other Changes
 ----------------------
diff --git a/solr/solrj/src/java/org/apache/solr/common/cloud/ZkStateReader.java b/solr/solrj/src/java/org/apache/solr/common/cloud/ZkStateReader.java
index a8a89c2f1b5..3fbcfaf4adc 100644
--- a/solr/solrj/src/java/org/apache/solr/common/cloud/ZkStateReader.java
+++ b/solr/solrj/src/java/org/apache/solr/common/cloud/ZkStateReader.java
@@ -428,7 +428,7 @@ public class ZkStateReader implements Closeable {
         if (watchedCollections.contains(s)) {
           DocCollection live = getCollectionLive(this, s);
           if (live != null) {
-            watchedCollectionStates.put(s, live);
+            updateWatchedCollection(live);
             // if it is a watched collection, add too
             result.put(s, new ClusterState.CollectionRef(live));
           }
@@ -506,15 +506,6 @@ public class ZkStateReader implements Closeable {
         }
         this.clusterState = clusterState;
       }
-      synchronized (ZkStateReader.this) {
-        for (String watchedCollection : watchedCollections) {
-          DocCollection live = getCollectionLive(this, watchedCollection);
-          if (live != null) {
-            updateWatchedCollection(live);
-          }
-        }
-      }
-
     } else {
       if (clusterStateUpdateScheduled) {
         log.debug("Cloud state update for ZooKeeper already scheduled");
@@ -946,9 +937,7 @@ public class ZkStateReader implements Closeable {
   
   private void updateWatchedCollection(DocCollection newState) {
     watchedCollectionStates.put(newState.getName(), newState);
-    log.info("Updating data for {} to ver {} ", newState.getName(),
-        newState.getZNodeVersion());
-    
+    log.info("Updating data for {} to ver {} ", newState.getName(), newState.getZNodeVersion());
     this.clusterState = clusterState.copyWith(newState.getName(), newState);
   }