These are the actions that I have taken and I still can't seem to run the script on PHP on my windows 8.1 platform.
Please do note that I have installed Python and have tested it. I am running python 2.7
(1) Step 1: Edited the Apache httpd.conf scripts to run cgi .py scripts

AddHandler cgi-script .cgi .pl .asp .py

(2) Step 2: Added a test script in cgi-bin folder of xampp. It is called 

    #!/Python27/python
    print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n"
    print "Hello world"

(3) Step 3: Created a PHP Code called Python.php

  $python =  exec('python C:\xampp\cgi-bin\BridgePHP.py');
  echo "Python is printing: " .  $python;

(4) I get the following output in my browser:

  Python is printing:

(5) I tested by running using the standard command prompt and the word "Hello World" was printed
I am unsure why php script is unable to run the python script. Is there any other settings that I should do?
I have finally figured this out:
I will have to restart the server whenever I add a new cgi script in the server. This worked. 
In this case BridgePHP.py
Running Python in PHP as a script in XAMPP (WINDOWS 8.1)