After making necessary modifications to the cshtml markup in the _BootstrapLayout.basic.cshtml file, I was able to successfully display the navigation bar items correctly. The guiding example I used for this task was the fixed top navbar from http://getbootstrap.com/examples/navbar-fixed-top/.
Previous Code (Not Functioning):
<div class="navbar navbar-default navbar-fixed-top">
<div class="navbar-inner">
<div class="container">
<a class="btn btn-navbar" data-toggle="collapse" data-target=".nav-collapse">
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
</a>
<a class="brand" href="#" title="change in _bootstrapLayout.basic.cshtml">Application Name</a>
<div class="nav-collapse collapse">
<ul class="nav">
@Html.Navigation()
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
New Code (Working as Intended):
<div class="navbar navbar-default navbar-fixed-top">
<div class="container">
<div class="navbar-header">
<button type="button" class="navbar-toggle" data-toggle="collapse" data-target=".navbar-collapse">
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
</button>
<a class="navbar-brand" href="#">Project name</a>
</div>
<div class="navbar-collapse collapse">
<ul class="nav navbar-nav">
@Html.Navigation()
</ul>
</div><!--/.nav-collapse -->
</div>
</div>
Outcome: