diff --git a/CHANGELOG.rst b/CHANGELOG.rst
index f1d6df1b7a..c4db21308c 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.rst
+++ b/CHANGELOG.rst
@@ -2,9 +2,10 @@
 CHANGELOG
 =========
 
-1.16.2
-======
+1.16.2.dev
+==========
 
+* bug-fix: Remove unnecessary dependency tensorflow
 * doc-fix: Change ``distribution`` to ``distributions``
 * bug-fix: Increase docker-compose http timeout and health check timeout to 120.
 * feature: Local Mode: Add support for intermediate output to a local directory.
@@ -33,6 +34,7 @@ CHANGELOG
 * feature: Add support for SageMaker Inference Pipelines
 * feature: Add support for SparkML serving container
 
+
 1.15.2
 ======
 
diff --git a/src/sagemaker/tensorflow/__init__.py b/src/sagemaker/tensorflow/__init__.py
index cc61966bff..82bfdd9dc8 100644
--- a/src/sagemaker/tensorflow/__init__.py
+++ b/src/sagemaker/tensorflow/__init__.py
@@ -19,13 +19,5 @@
 # classes for tensorflow serving. Currently tensorflow_serving_api can only be pip-installed for python 2.
 sys.path.append(os.path.dirname(__file__))
 
-from distutils.version import LooseVersion  # noqa: E402, F401 pylint: disable=no-name-in-module
-import tensorflow  # noqa: E402, F401
-
-if LooseVersion(tensorflow.__version__) < LooseVersion("1.3.0"):  # pylint: disable=no-member
-    message = 'Tensorflow version must be >= 1.3.0. Current version: {}'.format(
-        tensorflow.__version__)  # pylint: disable=no-member
-    raise AssertionError(message)
-
 from sagemaker.tensorflow.estimator import TensorFlow  # noqa: E402, F401
 from sagemaker.tensorflow.model import TensorFlowModel, TensorFlowPredictor  # noqa: E402, F401