Second, auto ordinarily ignores top-level consts (§ 2.4.3, p. 63). As usual in initializations, low-level consts, such as when an initializer is a pointer to const, are kept

const int ci = i, &cr = ci;
auto b = ci; // b is an int (top-level const in ci is dropped)
auto c = cr; // c is an int (cr is an alias for ci whose const is top-level)
auto d = &i; // d is an int*(& of an int object is int*)
auto e = &ci; // e is const int*(& of a const object is low-level const)