Catalog-operator pod is getting failed due to "invalid memory address"

Issue

The catalog-operator and packageserver pods are in CrashLoopBackOff with below error:

2024-08-19T07:14:51.705596242Z E0819 07:14:51.705510       1 runtime.go:79] Observed a panic: "invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference" (runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference)
2024-08-19T07:14:51.707754304Z panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference [recovered]
2024-08-19T07:14:51.707754304Z     panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference