I had to pass the GIT Personal Access Token while cloning the repo..

- name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.GIT_TOKEN }}

From then on I am able to commit/push with the git user which has admin access to the repo and effectively able to bypass the "Require a pull request before merging" check.

I referred to the following: https://www.paulmowat.co.uk/blog/resolve-github-action-gh006-protected-branch-update-failed