SummaryIn multicast routing, there are possibilities of route failures, link failures, node failures, packet losses due to network overloading, collision, and bad channel condition in mobile ad hoc network (MANET). The research article proposes solution for the above mentioned problem by a cross‐layer based lightweight reliable and secure multicast routing protocol for MANET. It consists of totally three phases. The first phase, reliable multicast route discovery is performed. A multicast tree is established and is hierarchically divided into clusters based on the depth of the tree. Then, the cluster heads (CH's) were selected based on residual energy, link stability, and remaining bandwidth, and gateway nodes are chosen depending on their residual energy and packet delivery rate. In phase 2, trust value of each node is estimated and updated depending on each activity. During multicast transmission, the trust values of CH and gateway are checked. If their value is less than a minimum threshold, then they are considered as misbehaved. For protecting the data transmitted from the sender, one‐way hash function based Message Authentication Code (MAC) is used. In phase‐3, bulk data loss recovery is performed at the receiver by applying the Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) and Forward Error Correction (FEC) techniques.