How to compare current date with dates from API to display different ImageView if the date from API greater, less, or equal to current date in Kotlin

I am getting dates from API based on what the user posted to the API

what i am trying to do here is displaying different ImageView if the date from API is greater, less, or equal to the current date

i have this bind function:

fun bind(event: PlannerGet) {
        val stringzz = event.date
        val date = LocalDate.parse(stringzz, DateTimeFormatter.ISO_DATE)
        val dateFormatter: DateTimeFormatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("dd-MMM-uuuu")
        val sdf = SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yyyy")
        val c = Calendar.getInstance()
        try {
            c.time = sdf.parse(currentDate("dd-MMM-yyyy"))
        } catch (e: ParseException) {
            e.printStackTrace()
        }
        val _date: String = sdf.format(c.time)
        val gregorianDate: LocalDate = LocalDate.parse(_date, dateFormatter)
        val islamicDate: HijrahDate = HijrahDate.from(date)


        mTextHijri.text = islamicDate.format(dateFormatter).toString()
        mTextNote.text = "${event.note}"
        mTextTitle.text = "${event.title} at ${event.location}"
        mTextIndex.text = "${getTime(event.startTime!!)} - ${getTime(event.endTime!!)}"
        mTextDate.text = (date.format(DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedDate(FormatStyle.FULL)))
        mTextTimeEstimated.text = getEstimated(getTime(event.startTime), getTime(event.endTime))

        
    }

and it is working fine, i tried to add if condition to the function like this:

if(mTextDate.toString() < _date){
            mTick.setImageResource(R.drawable.tick)
        }
        else if (mTextDate.toString() > _date){
            mTick.setImageResource(R.drawable.ic_logopng)
        }
        else if (mTextDate.toString() == _date){
            mTick.setImageResource(R.drawable.blue_logo)
        }

and i already posted 3 different dates in the API to compare but i ended up with the same ImageView every time, what am i doing wrong here?

and i also tried to compare straight away from the data class (Data class below):

data class PlannerGet(
val date: String,
val endTime: String,
val id: Int,
val location: String,
val note: String,
val startTime: String,
val title: String
)

but i ended up with the same ImageView every time

any suggestion to make this work?