  Bhat characterizes the family of linear maps defined on $B(\mathcal{H})$
which preserve unitary conjugation. We generalize this idea and study the maps
with a similar equivariance property on finite-dimensional matrix algebras. We
show that the maps with equivariance property are significant to study
$k$-positivity of linear maps defined on finite-dimensional matrix algebras.
Choi showed that $n$-positivity is different from $(n-1)$-positivity for the
linear maps defined on $n$ by $n$ matrix algebras. In this paper, we present a
parametric family of linear maps $\Phi_{\alpha, \beta,n} : M_{n}(\mathbb{C})
\rightarrow M_{n^{2}}(\mathbb{C})$ and study the properties of positivity,
completely positivity, decomposability etc. We determine values of parameters
$\alpha$ and $\beta$ for which the family of maps $\Phi_{\alpha, \beta,n}$ is
positive for any natural number $n \geq 3$. We focus on the case of $n=3,$ that
is, $\Phi_{\alpha, \beta,3}$ and study the properties of $2$-positivity,
completely positivity and decomposability. In particular, we give values of
parameters $\alpha$ and $\beta$ for which the family of maps $\Phi_{\alpha,
\beta,3}$ is $2$-positive and not completely positive.
