Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of mobile users without any support of fixed infrastructure. The nodes in these networks have several constraints such as transmission power, bandwidth and processing capability. In addition to it an important parameter of interest is the residual battery power of the nodes. Conventional routing schemes do not take this aspect into consideration. Therefore this paper proposes a routing strategy that takes this aspect into consideration by modifying the Route Request (RREQ) packet of the Ad hoc On demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol. The protocol chooses a threshold below which a node is not allowed to relay data/control packets. The results show a remarkable improvement in the value of Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), throughput and at the same time the network lifetime is not affected.