• Indigenous development of superconducting joints employing commercial MgB 2 wires using in-house developed Cu electroplating technique for HTS current leads. • Micro-structural study of Cu coated MgB 2 wires is performed using SEM-EDX analysis. • As a part of validation, developed MgB 2 joints are tested under lab scale conditions in a dedicated cryostat up to 1.5 kA at ∼ 25 K. • Application of such MgB 2 insert in between HTS module and NBTI short can provide protection to the current leads from undue quench and better cryo stability. • MgB 2 can be considered as potential candidate for superconducting feeders system. The concept of Monel sheathed MgB 2 joints using Cu electroplating could be used in large scale fusion and accelerator devices in future. Low resistance, helium leak tight, cryo-stable superconducting (SC) joints with sufficient strength to absorb thermo-mechanical stress are commonly used in large sized magnets, their feeders and current leads (CL). Among high temperature superconductor (HTS), cuprate oxide based tapes are the popular options for CL applications. Recently composite magnesium diboride (MgB 2) wires with superconducting transition temperature of 39 K are getting wide attention for low field applications. Use of Monel as a sheath material in MgB 2 wires poses a major challenge while fabricating SC joints due to its low wettability and flowability using PbSn alloy based solder material. To tackle this issue, we exploited Cu electroplating technique to ease fabrication of MgB 2 – NbTi: Cu as well as HTS: Cu - MgB 2 joints. The details of in-house electroplating technique developed to fabricate bottom joints of BSCCO-2223 based HTS CL using MgB 2 wires are reported. To study the morphology of such Cu coated MgB 2 wires microstructural investigation is performed using Scanning Electron Microscope with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDX) analysis. Similar Cu plated MgB 2 wires are used to fabricate bottom joints of a prototype HTS CL. The performance of joints is preliminary attempted in the HTS CL test experiment up to 1.5 kA at 20 K. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]