Viability of the exact tri-bimaximal mixing at M_(GUT) in SO(10)

General structures of the charged lepton and the neutrino mixing matrices leading to tri-bimaximal leptonic mixing are determined. These are then integrated into an SO(10) model within which detailed fits to fermion masses and mixing angles are given. It is shown that one can obtain excellent fits to all the fermion masses and quark mixing angles keeping tri-bimaximal leptonic mixing intact. Different perturbations to the basic structure are considered and those which can or which cannot account for the recent T2K and MINOS results on the reactor mixing angle $\theta_{13}^l$ are identified.