Android deeplink navigation replaces current fragment in view and cannot navigate back

Question

I have a NavigationView (Drawer) with 5 menus each pointing to 5 different fragments. Say Fragment A,B,C,D,E.

Now I want to navigate to fragment C on clicking a notification (Pending Intent)

This is my deepLink

return NavDeepLinkBuilder(this)
            .setComponentName(MainActivity::class.java)
            .setGraph(R.navigation.mobile_navigation)
            .setDestination(R.id.nav_fragment_c)
            .setArguments(args)
            .createPendingIntent()

It navigates to the fragment but suppose the user is currently on fragment A, the deep link adds the fragment on top of fragment A and won't let the user navigate back to fragment A even on clicking the drawer menu A (behaves like it's disabled). However, on clicking the back button it takes the user back to fragment A and everything works fine again (I guess it pops the fragment).

Am I doing something wrong here? How do I tell the navController to navigate to the desired fragment without adding it on top of whichever fragment the user is currently on.

Also noticed the same behavior when I do navController.navigate(destinationId)

Here is my navContoller

val navController = findNavController(R.id.nav_host_fragment_content_main)
        binding.navView?.let {
            appBarConfiguration = AppBarConfiguration(
                setOf(
                    R.id.nav_fragment_a,
                    R.id.nav_fragment_b,
                    R.id.nav_fragment_c,
                    R.id.nav_fragment_d,
                    R.id.nav_fragment_e,
                ),
                binding.drawerLayout
            )
            setupActionBarWithNavController(navController, appBarConfiguration)
            it.setupWithNavController(navController)
        }