Why isnt node checked for nil value in start when transplanting binary tree
If $v$ is NIL then transplanting $v$ just transplants an empty tree. This is fine. It is handled in the exact same way as transplanting an actual tree, the only difference being that we don't need to update $v$'s parent pointer.

Could the code be structured differently? Probably. Why, then, did the authors choose this particular implementation? No deep reason. They programmed the algorithm, and that's the code they came up with. You might have come up with a different code. There's no one right answer in programming.