For a digital trail, below are solutions to the above issue:
Issue was caused by the fact that the Python environment has not been initialized or configured correctly to execute the Python scripts containing ArcPy modules from ArcGIS Pro.
I was executing Python script from "..\Python27\ArcGIS10.8\" that is pointing to the Python interpreter (python.exe) that comes from the legacy ArcMap's 32-bit Python v2.7 installation,
which is incorrect when running ArcPy modules from ArcGIS Pro 3.2.2. ArcGIS Pro 3.2 comes bundled with a separate 64-bit Python 3.9.18 installation and this should be used when running ArcPy modules
from ArcGIS Pro in stand-alone Python scripts.
~Jeff