One of the major design goals in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is to improve network lifetime. In this paper, an efficient clustering protocol with multi-hop routing is proposed which aims at increasing network lifetime. In the initialization phase, the base station elects cluster heads (CHs) based on the residual energy of the sensor nodes. The clusters formed by the CHs initially are maintained till all its member nodes die, while the cluster heads are rotated within the formed clusters based on the residual energy levels of the nodes at the beginning of each round. The cluster heads aggregate the data received from cluster members and send it to the base station in either one or two hops depending on whether the node is a level 1 CH or a level 2 CH, which is decided by the CH's distance from the base station. The proposed clustering protocol has shown a significant 300 percent improvement in network lifetime as measured by the time till the first death of a node and a 10 percent increase in the total number of packets delivered to the base station, when compared to conventional LEACH. The MATLAB simulation performed considers the network area to be rectangular (100m × 100m) with the base station outside the network area.