Why does ifup script fail to bring up bond devices with "Device bond0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization." error in RHEL6.5?

Issue

• If a similarly named bond device is already present ifup fails to initialize new device and fails to activate the device with following error:

# ifup bond0
./network-functions: line 436: /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves: No such file or directory
./network-functions: line 436: [: too many arguments
./network-functions: line 436: /sys/class/net/bond0/bonding/slaves: No such file or directory
./network-functions: line 436: [: too many arguments
Device bond0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.

• Is this a known bug? Is there a fix available for this problem?