So found a way to work around this by checking if the element is present and only then applying : First check if EmployeeDetails is present Second check before we apply Descendants selector ( this is required otherwise Descendant selector check throws error stated if there are no child elements ) This checks if EmployeeDetails has any child elements

{
    (EmployeesInfo:{
        (EmployeeDetails:(payload.EmployeesInfo.EmployeeDetails.. )) if (!isEmpty(payload.EmployeesInfo.EmployeeDetails)  )
       
    })if (payload.EmployeesInfo.EmployeeDetails?)
}