Upcasting is converting a derived-class reference or pointer to a base-class. In other words, upcasting allows us to treat a derived type as though it were its base type. It is always allowed for public inheritance, without an explicit type cast. This is a result of the is-a relationship between the base and derived classes.
The opposite process, converting a base-class pointer (reference) to a derived-class pointer (reference) is called downcasting. Downcasting is not allowed without an explicit type cast. The reason for this restriction is that the is-a relationship is not, in most of the cases, symmetric. A derived class could add new data members, and the class member functions that used these data members wouldn't apply to the base class.