Near maximal atmospheric mixing in neutrino mass matrices with two vanishing minors

In the flavor basis there are seven cases of two vanishing minors in the neutrino mass matrix which can accommodate the present neutrino oscillation data including the recent T2K data. It is found that two of these cases, namely B-5 and B-6 predict near maximal atmospheric neutrino mixing in the limit of large effective neutrino mass. This feature remains irrespective of the values of solar and reactor mixing angles. A non-zero reactor mixing angle is naturally accommodated in these textures. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.