I could resolve it by following the steps.
Connect to the 'zookeeper' container in k8s
k exec -it podid -- bash
Connect with zookeeper cli,
./bin/zkCli.sh
Make sure that it has created the 'kafka-manager' path already. if it does not exist, then try to create a cluster in 'kafka-manager' first.
ls /kafka-manager
Hit the following commands to create subsequent paths,
create /kafka-manager/mutex ""
create /kafka-manager/mutex/locks ""
create /kafka-manager/mutex/leases ""
Now try to create the cluster again.
The output would be like this,
WATCHER::
WatchedEvent state:SyncConnected type:None path:null
[zk: localhost:2181(CONNECTED) 0] ls /kafka-manager
[configs, deleteClusters, clusters]
[zk: localhost:2181(CONNECTED) 1] create /kafka-manager/mutex ""
Created /kafka-manager/mutex
[zk: localhost:2181(CONNECTED) 2] create /kafka-manager/mutex/locks ""
Created /kafka-manager/mutex/locks
[zk: localhost:2181(CONNECTED) 3] create /kafka-manager/mutex/leases ""
Created /kafka-manager/mutex/leases
[zk: localhost:2181(CONNECTED) 4]
The original answer is mentioned here,
https://github.com/yahoo/CMAK/issues/731#issuecomment-643880544