Kernel panic - not syncing: Requested init /init failed (error -2)

Question

Attaching a bit more of the boot log.

HugeTLB registered 1.00 GiB page size, pre-allocated 0 pages
HugeTLB registered 32.0 MiB page size, pre-allocated 0 pages
HugeTLB registered 2.00 MiB page size, pre-allocated 0 pages
HugeTLB registered 64.0 KiB page size, pre-allocated 0 pages
iommu: Default domain type: Translated 
iommu: DMA domain TLB invalidation policy: strict mode 
SCSI subsystem initialized
EDAC MC: Ver: 3.0.0
clocksource: Switched to clocksource arch_sys_counter
workingset: timestamp_bits=62 max_order=19 bucket_order=0
Block layer SCSI generic (bsg) driver version 0.4 loaded (major 252)
io scheduler mq-deadline registered
cacheinfo: Unable to detect cache hierarchy for CPU 0
brd: module loaded
VFS: Mounted root (tmpfs filesystem) on device 0:15.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 704K
Run /init as init process
  with arguments:
    /init
  with environment:
    HOME=/
    TERM=linux
Kernel panic - not syncing: Requested init /init failed (error -2).
CPU: 0 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 5.15.0-rc7-00001-g8d7daa446b53-dirty #33
Call trace:
 dump_backtrace+0x0/0x1d0
 show_stack+0x14/0x20
 dump_stack_lvl+0x64/0x7c
 dump_stack+0x14/0x2c
 panic+0x158/0x304
 kernel_init+0xf0/0x150
 ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20
Kernel Offset: disabled
CPU features: 0x00001001,20000802
Memory Limit: none
---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: Requested init /init failed (error -2). ]---

I am building an embedded linux OS for an experimental FPGA platform. I used upstream U-boot(boot-loader), linux(kernel) and buildroot(just for filesystem).

I followed some examples and enabled the required initrd/initramfs support in my linux config.

CONFIG_BLK_DEV_INITRD=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM_COUNT=1
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RAM_SIZE=10240

I used the bootm command in u-boot to load a FIT image that comprises of the linux kernel, dtb and the rootfs.cpio(compiled from buildroot). Relevant info here: FIT test

These are the bootargs passed to the kernel:

console=ttyS0,9600 earlyprintk maxcpus=1 earlycon root=/dev/ram init=/init rw rootfstype=tmpfs debug

Note:

Couple of other things I tried , but resulted in the same error.

• Passing the kernel,dtb and fs image separately.
• Tried passing init=/bin/sh , /sbin/init , /etc/init , /bin/init
• Tried a basic initramfs with just an init script , simple directory structure and a separately compiled busybox placed in /bin/busybox with symbolic links.
• Rather than passing an external FS, I passed the path to the initramfs source and compiled it into the kernel with CONFIG_INITRAMFS_SOURCE.

I would appreciate any feedback/pointers on what I could be missing, been stuck on this for while now.